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Still Waiting for Elon's Blog Post on Autopilot Update...

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Thanks for the pointer. Here is what I think is the most interesting part, answering a question about the car steering itself when the driver has not turned autosteer on:

...

"The full answer is sort of complex and nuanced and I think difficult to incorporate into an article, but I do my best here. So if Autosteer is not on, let say you are going around a sharp bend and there’s a metal guard railing or a post or some obstacle and there’s a sharp bend, if Autosteer is not on, the only logical thing to do is to only actuate the brakes at the last split second because it doesn’t know if you are actually going to hit the curb if you are distracted.

The assumption normally would be that the driver would actually take the curve and not actually power through whatever the object is outside of the sharp turn. It’s quite different with Autosteer on because Autosteer then knows what its predicted path is so it knows that it’s going to turn and it knows that it shouldn’t brake just because there’s an obstacle in front of you in a sharp turn – off the road in a sharp turn.

What it can actually do is scan ahead and see if there’s an obstacle on the road in its predicted path and in that case there’s much more time to brake – and can actually more likely come to a full stop. Let’s say that there’s a car or truck that is broken down or something on the road it can brake in a much more measured way and it is much more likely to reach a full stop and avoid hitting the object.

So it’s really gonna make a lot more sense to enable Autosteer than not enable Autosteer. Does that answer your question?

I should mention that there also one other element: even when Autosteer is not actually turned on, if the car is highly confident that you are really off the road, aren’t countering the free space violation, and you are going to hit something unless you turn – we will turn on the ability gradually to nudge the car at least mostly back onto the road so that at least you are not completely going off the road.

This will be a function that somebody can turn on or off. Do you want essentially “Emergency Autosteer”? In that scenario, it wouldn’t try to keep you within your lane lines, but it would keep you from veering you off the road."

...

I wonder how many people here see this as a great thing vs. those who see it as more of a concern. I don't want to be a Luddite but I guess I fall a little bit into the second camp. Emergency situations are almost by definition non-standard and out of the ordinary, and I believe that a human driver, with much better visual interpretive abilities than a car, is better at choosing the right action to take in such situations than the car. I don't want to be fighting for control of the wheel with AP (or for control of the accelerator and brakes with TACC). I probably would not turn it the feature on (see his last line). Or maybe I'm overly concerned.
 
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I wonder how many people here see this as a great thing vs. those who see it as more of a concern. I don't want to be a Luddite but I guess I fall a little bit into the second camp. Emergency situations are almost by definition non-standard and out of the ordinary, and I believe that a human driver, with much better visual interpretive abilities than a car, is better at choosing the right action to take in such situations than the car. I don't want to be fighting for control of the wheel with AP (or for control of the accelerator and brakes with TACC). Or maybe I'm overly concerned.

Yeah. This one is an interesting question. I don't text or use a phone in my hand while driving, and am generally not distracted. I'll probably choose not to enable this feature, at least to begin with.

As you were saying, I trust my judgement more than the car's in unusual critical situations right now, and I don't believe I'm likely to encounter the distracted wandering out of lane/off the road that this is seems to be aimed at - especially not with AP right there waiting.

If I knew I need to be distracted for a bit for some reason and AP was available where I was, I'd certainly engaged AP first, making this irrelevant for that occasion.
 
The time-based steering nag is stupid. Think about your own experience with highway driving: it is *far* more likely that you will need to suddenly brake than suddenly steer, yet there's not a cruise control system on earth that requires you to tap the brakes once a minute to prove you're paying attention.

Today, with my pre-AP P85, I routinely knee-drive with coffee in one hand and a bagel in the other when conditions permit. It would absolutely be safer to do this with AP than without, but sounds like 8.0 will force me to do the less safe thing. For safety.
So because you are a terrible driver, the system is flawed?
 
I wonder how many people here see this as a great thing vs. those who see it as more of a concern. I don't want to be a Luddite but I guess I fall a little bit into the second camp. Emergency situations are almost by definition non-standard and out of the ordinary, and I believe that a human driver, with much better visual interpretive abilities than a car, is better at choosing the right action to take in such situations than the car. I don't want to be fighting for control of the wheel with AP (or for control of the accelerator and brakes with TACC). I probably would not turn it the feature on (see his last line). Or maybe I'm overly concerned.

Then, in your case, as you noted you can turn it off.

I agree with your assessment above (the driver has the ability to make better decisions than the auto pilot) but where I think the rub comes in is assuming that the driver is paying attention. Sadly, I think the majority (more than 50%) of drivers today think it is okay to text, respond to emails or have a multi course meal while barreling down the highway at 70 MPH. Maybe it will keep one of them from barreling in to me.
 
Sadly, I think the majority (more than 50%) of drivers today think it is okay to text, respond to emails or have a multi course meal while barreling down the highway at 70 MPH. Maybe it will keep one of them from barreling in to me.

I would hope that if any of those people is in an AP equipped Tesla, they'd be smart enough to make a quick double pull of the CC stalk before chowing down...
 
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I would hope that if any of those people is in an AP equipped Tesla, they'd be smart enough to make a quick double pull of the CC stalk before chowing down...
Exactly. With AP available to be explicitly engaged, there's no excuse for wandering off the road while going through one's music collection, etc. So I assume drivers will be paying attention when AP has not been explicitly turned on. I know I will.
 
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Well they did not state which warnings, when ignored, would trigger shutting AP off. I read it as any warning, which is the hold wheel nag. From what I read, I believe that if you trigger 3 hold wheel alerts, AP will shut off until you park. If true, combined with the new 1 minute nag at highway speeds, AP functionality is going to take a big, negative, hit. We will know in 1-2 weeks.
 
Well they did not state which warnings, when ignored, would trigger shutting AP off. I read it as any warning, which is the hold wheel nag. From what I read, I believe that if you trigger 3 hold wheel alerts, AP will shut off until you park. If true, combined with the new 1 minute nag at highway speeds, AP functionality is going to take a big, negative, hit. We will know in 1-2 weeks.

They were clear. If you ignore three AUDIBLE alerts in an hour it will be disabled. This is not hard to understand.
 
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There also a large number of important improvements. Something I think will be quite significant is that if the user ignores repeated warning to keep their hands on the wheel, if it ignores the audible alarm more than 3 times in an hour then the driver will have to park and restart in order to enable Autosteer.

One of the ironies that we’ve seen is counter intuitive and a lot of people on the consumer watchdog sites and in some cases on regulatory sites have assumed that Autopilot accidents are more likely for new users. In fact, it is the opposite. Autopilot accidents are far more likely for expert users. It is not the neophytes. It’s the experts.

They get very comfortable with it and repeatedly ignore the car’s warnings. It’s like a reflex. The car will beep at them, they tug the wheel, the car will beep at them, they tug the wheel, and it becomes an unconscious reflex action. So we will see half a dozen or more, sometimes as many as 10 warning in one hour continuously ignored by the driver. We really want to avoid that situation

Yes, there it is (I missed it). From my 22,000 miles of AP use, I would fall into the 'comfortable' zone with AP use. I wish I had stayed on firmware 7.0. The system was very predictable and very useful. I will do my very best to stay on firmware 7.1 for as long as I own the car.
 
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What does ignoring mean in this context? Not that I expect anyone to know/have a definite answer, but these are the 2 scenarios I can think of/make sense to me:

1. The car beeps (after visual warning), user doesn't nudge the wheel, second beep comes up --> counter = counter + 1?

2.the car beeps (after visual warning) --> counter = counter + 1 ?
 
Part 6 transcript up:
Transcript: Elon Musk’s press conference about Tesla Autopilot under v8.0 update [Part 6]

I found this bit interesting. I had a theory that 8.0 might end up being a mandatory update if supercharging idle fees ended up getting implemented to get everyone onboard at once. This comment about this update satisfying the NHTSA (but yet not being a recall) makes me wonder if the update will be optional.

David Shepardson – Reuters
Thank you. You mentioned some of the changes you are making in term of preventing – require people to place their hands on the steering wheel. Can you tell us how it is changing in term of how many seconds you will be allowed hands off the wheel versus the current one and will this satisfy NHTSA or do you think you will have to do this upgrade as part of a formal recall?

Elon Musk – Tesla CEO
The word “recall” doesn’t make sense in this context since this is an over-the-air update. “Recall” is for companies where the cars require plug in something into the car. It’s not a term that really make sense in this situation. We have done most of these changes with NHTSA and I don’t want to speak for them but they appear to be pretty happy with the changes and the reactions from them is quite positive.
 
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What does ignoring mean in this context? Not that I expect anyone to know/have a definite answer, but these are the 2 scenarios I can think of/make sense to me:

1. The car beeps (after visual warning), user doesn't nudge the wheel, second beep comes up --> counter = counter + 1?

2.the car beeps (after visual warning) --> counter = counter + 1 ?

So in Electrek's transcript, Elon says ...

"Autopilot accidents are far more likely for expert users. It is not the neophytes. It’s the experts. ... They get very comfortable with it and repeatedly ignore the car’s warnings. It’s like a reflex. The car will beep at them, they tug the wheel, the car will beep at them, they tug the wheel, and it becomes an unconscious reflex action. So we will see half a dozen or more, sometimes as many as 10 warning in one hour continuously ignored by the driver. We really want to avoid that situation."

He talks about people tugging the wheel after the nagging beep, and in the next sentence equates multiple beep-and-tugs with warnings being ignored. The implication (which I think is pretty clear) is that "ignoring" means taking your hands off the wheel after tugging it. The beep tells us to leave our hands on the wheel, not just to put our hands on the wheel, and we (mostly) don't do it. So multiple beeps, even if you tug each time, equates to ignoring the demand to leave your hands on the wheel.

I hope I'm wrong, but I believe it's three beeps and you're out, even if you tug. Tugging and then removing hands is the situation they want to stop.
 
Characterizing what they claim to have done with existing hardware as a "bug fix" is a little over the top. It's incredibly difficult and they didn't have to do it (most if not all car companies would have waited years and for new model hardware). So yeah I'm not with you here.

The focus of the blog post was AP, not 8.0. You will likely get UI improvements with both, but count me among those much more interested in AP improvements and innovation over cosmetic refreshes.

I'd disagree... if they want to avoid future lawsuits they absolutely had to do it. You don't get to call something Auto Pilot (short for AUTOMATIC Pilot), and then not have it act in a way that could not be described as "Automatic". Especially when the consequences involve damage to property and death. Now if they had just called it "Intelligent Driver Assist", I'd buy your hypothesis that they could not improve it and be in the clear.

btw... its interesting that if you read Elon's tweets the week before he originally said he was going to make the announcement in the the correct order, then clearly the announcement was going to be about AP. But if you read them in reverse, then it looked like he was going to talk about 8.0. I had to go back and re-read them twice to get that. shrug.
 
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I for on
I hope I'm wrong, but I believe it's three beeps and you're out, even if you tug. Tugging and then removing hands is the situation they want to stop.

Yeah, I have a feeling that it will be this as well. We'll see. On the bright side, this will probably introduce a "constant wheel torque applicator"-device to the aftermarket place (for people who think that strapping a Coke/Beer can to the wheel is just so un-stylish... :) )
 
We have done most of these changes with NHTSA and I don’t want to speak for them but they appear to be pretty happy with the changes and the reactions from them is quite positive.

The investigation letter from NHTSA included a bunch of demands for information relating to autopilot, including that Tesla had to communicate any planned changes to the autopilot software with them.
 
I'd disagree... if they want to avoid future lawsuits they absolutely had to do it. You don't get to call something Auto Pilot (short for AUTOMATIC Pilot), and then not have it act in a way that could not be described as "Automatic"
Would it be OK if it works analogous to the way airplane autopilot works? Because, uh..