Tesla forced an update of my P85D to 2019.16.2

[SMAlset]

Nah, this is PR BS. No government agency demanded anything from Tesla on the nags front. They added the nags to save face to pretend like they were doing something to combat the idiots who don't pay attention while using AP. As noted, the nags do nothing. They're nothing like the rumble strip example, since everyone I've ever seen use AP regularly on an unmodded car that has been doing so for a while "defeats" the nags by just mindlessly tugging the wheel occasionally or nudging it with a knee. This does nothing to focus their attention, nothing to prevent the problems that idiots have caused while using AP. It's just safety theater, and an annoyance to the rest of us who properly use the features.

As for the "I wouldn't want to be in an accident" part of your post... if you get into an accident where you are at fault.... you're at fault. You're the one driving, and who has the driver's license. It doesn't matter if you were using AP, cruise control, knee driving, whatever. Until responsibility is abdicated to Tesla under some yet-to-be-seen FSD future, any screw ups are the driver's fault. End of story.

There’s a lot of tech being put in cars (nags, alerts, alarms, cameras in the steering wheel and rear view mirrors) to address the government agencies concerns to do something about inattentive drivers on driver assist systems. Don’t think the effort/expense would be there if it wasn’t becoming more or less mandatory for mfgrs —be it government approval or insurance company (and subsequently policyholders’ rates). Didn’t Tesla put nags in place to satisfy and then another fatal accident occurred and with this issue raised again ended up adding more? That’s been my understanding. So I guess the question would be what would you suggest they design in the cars to satisfy the powers that be?

Totally agree on responsibility. However I can see a case like that with injuries/death and an owner who disabled “safety” features because they felt they were a nuisance as someone prosecutors and jurors would come down harder on. Just saying.

 

[wk057]

I'm still not with you on the government/insurance demands thing. There is simply no evidence of this.

So I guess the question would be what would you suggest they design in the cars to satisfy the powers that be?

A safety solution would be actual driver attentiveness monitoring. On the Model 3 at least, with the interior camera, this is possible. You look away from the road for more than a second: BEEP BEEP.

Ideally, though, the system would only nag when it needed the driver's assistance, and work properly in the bulk of scenarios.

Totally agree on responsibility. However I can see a case like that with injuries/death and an owner who disabled “safety” features because they felt they were a nuisance as someone prosecutors and jurors would come down harder on. Just saying.

In that position, I would argue the same points I'm arguing here: That it's not actually a safety feature, and defeating it did not contribute in any way to the accident nor could it have prevented it. Along with, "Here are numerous examples to backup this point."

"Apply light force" is simply not a proxy for driver attentiveness.

 

[AWDtsla]

Totally agree on responsibility. However I can see a case like that with injuries/death and an owner who disabled “safety” features because they felt they were a nuisance as someone prosecutors and jurors would come down harder on. Just saying.

Nuisance alarms become as valuable as no alarm. Google "Alarm Fatigue".

These user interface problems have been studied for decades already and good conclusions reached. The critique of the entire Tesla UI, including autopilot nags are the result of being designed by someone who doesn't know anything, and didn't bother to pick up the book.

 

[trm2]

From the insurance perspective, we are just now starting to develop a stance on the SAE Levels. Not just Tesla, but all companies. And by just starting, I do mean that we have a meeting date and a panel (that I am on with a folks from other areas of the company as well as outside counsel that specializes in claims of this nature) but that is it. A claim involving AP or any of the other systems is still just a claim.

I assume other insurance companies are starting similar things and once (and even IF) one company makes some type of move, the rest will fall into 2 camps. Jump right in because someone else is doing it or wait to see how things shake out.

I wouldn’t expect any changes in the near future, but long term could see something like Utah has for drinking and driving. You can pledge you will not drink and get a nice discount on your insurance. However, if you cause an accident AND you are drunk, your limits go to state minimum and you are on the hook for the rest. A few subtleties involved, but that is a “close enough” explanation for here.

I should add that it has been a few years since I was involved with Utah as one of my states, so things could have changed, but I don’t think they have.

 

[SMAlset]

There’s a lot of tech being put in cars (nags, alerts, alarms, cameras in the steering wheel and rear view mirrors) to address the government agencies concerns to do something about inattentive drivers on driver assist systems. Don’t think the effort/expense would be there if it wasn’t becoming more or less mandatory for mfgrs —be it government approval or insurance company (and subsequently policyholders’ rates). Didn’t Tesla put nags in place to satisfy and then another fatal accident occurred and with this issue raised again ended up adding more? That’s been my understanding. ....

I'm still not with you on the government/insurance demands thing. There is simply no evidence of this.

So what I was recalling was in the case of the fatal Model S crash in Williston, FL, the NTSB report concluded these two points among others (emphasis mine below):

• The way in which the Tesla “Autopilot” system monitored and responded to the driver’s interaction with the steering wheel was not an effective method of ensuring driver engagement.
• Tesla made design changes to its “Autopilot” system following the crash. The change reduced the period of time before the “Autopilot” system issues a warning/alert when the driver’s hands are off the steering wheel. The change also added a preferred road constraint to the alert timing sequence.

The NTSB further stated:

To manufacturers of vehicles equipped with Level 2 vehicle automation systems (Audi of America, BMW of North America, Infiniti USA, Mercedes-Benz USA, Tesla Inc., and Volvo Car USA):

1. Incorporate system safeguards that limit the use of automated vehicle control systems to those conditions for which they were designed.
   
   
2. Develop applications to more effectively sense the driver’s level of engagement and alert the driver when engagement is lacking while automated vehicle control systems are in use.

(Continued below)

 

[SMAlset]

A safety solution would be actual driver attentiveness monitoring. On the Model 3 at least, with the interior camera, this is possible. You look away from the road for more than a second: BEEP BEEP.

Ideally, though, the system would only nag when it needed the driver's assistance, and work properly in the bulk of scenarios.

Whether or not the wheel nags are as effective as possibly getting one's attention focused on the road ahead as other facial/eye movement monitoring systems that send out beeps, Tesla did respond to the NTSB's investigation and recommendations after the crash and I assume the wheel nags if not thwarted do get one's attention hopefully focused on the road. One of Tesla's stated goals goes to safety so to ignore a government agency's findings and recommendations would not be viewed as acceptable on many levels. If viewed as less safe, insurance rates will be affected. While the Model S/X I assume doesn't currently have the capablity to add facial monitoring, and until new hardware design and implementation is capable of processing footage from it, I don't see how Tesla can comply with recommendations other than by what they have done. Other than the use interior cameras, I'm not hearing any other suggestions to improve upon this.

"Apply light force" is simply not a proxy for driver attentiveness.

I'm going to guess here that the agency looks at at least having your hands on the wheel to some degree as a "safety measure", whether people agree with that or not. Too many unanticipated things like pothole blowouts, drivers running red lights, or something falling off a vehicle can occur in split seconds and having one's hands on the wheel when you are responsible for still operating the vehicle and taking over can mean life or death sometimes.

 

[wk057]

None of what's been posted above negates my previous statement:

"Apply light force" is not a measure of driver attentiveness (or driver "engagement", to use the term from above).

A case and point example: Los Altos planning commission chair arrested for Tesla DUI <-- This is after the addition of the current ultra-nags. If you can literally sleep at the wheel for miles, the system obviously is not measuring driver engagement.

Since hands-on-the-wheel or "light force" simply can not gauge driver awareness or engagement in any meaningful way, it's a complete non-solution. Again, safety theater.

 

[SMAlset]

Granted it's not 100% an indicator, but don't you agree that it takes time to put your hands upon the wheel to grab if something does come out of left field at you and your passengers and the extra seconds to make that transfer to the wheel to take over could be crucial to the outcome of avoiding or being in an accident? I say this because I had a co-worker who was on cruise control back in the 80s on a busy highway in Chicago. She suffered a sudden blowout (with both hands on the wheel) and said the car jerked very hard to the side. The cruise control kept the car engaged at that speed until she could react and brake which she was trying to do while fighting the wheel. Touch the brake and AP's off and you're on your own.

I still see at this point in time that some type of steering wheel alerts is a good thing. I can only imagine what threads we'll have when the facial monitoring system goes in place and the system beeps at you.


BTW I do agree with OP on he should have been given a pending update alert notification by phone or on the car. In fact I found this in a Model S 8.0 manual which I think I had saved to pdf at the time of our purchase.

 

[whitex]

I think something people are completely missing with Tesla's updates is that installing an update makes the car completely unusable while the update is in progress, and no way to abort it or otherwise use the vehicle.

If nothing else, this should be a key argument against forced updates.

What if there had been an emergency, you go to use your car to get to the hospital or whatever, and bam... it's in the middle of or just started an hour long forced update that you didn't approve and were not aware of? Now you're stuck. I don't know about you, but I'd definitely feel like Tesla would be liable if anything would happen to someone in such a case.

Even in a less serious scenario, where you just need to go somewhere... and Tesla has essentially locked your car down for an hour without your consent.

In no way shape or form is this acceptable. If the updates were seamless and didn't impact usability at all, that'd be one thing... but that's basically impossible to do.

Edit: And no, doing this in "off-peak" times is no excuse, either, as it's none of Tesla's business when you need to use your car.

Ok, I am the last to defend Tesla on the crap they pull, and I absolutely agree they should not be forcing updates, BUT, your car being disabled because of an update, in court it would probably play out no different than your car breaking down. How is you have to go somewhere and your car is updating different than you have to go somewhere and your car won't start because the EMMC on the MCU failed due to too many logs, or simply your charge port won't let go of the charger, or the car won't start because something else broke down. Liability from Tesla would be the same for all such situations, which is limited to repairing the car in a reasonable time if the car is under warranty. Yes, you can think of some really expensive scenarios (I was going to play the lottery, I had the numbers all filled out, my Tesla was updating and I didn't make it but it turns out I would have won $800M - pay up Elon!) but it will all go back to the warranty - all car manufacturers warranty says they will fix when the car breaks down, they do not guarantee that the car will not break down.

 

[wk057]

Granted it's not 100% an indicator, but don't you agree that it takes time to put your hands upon the wheel to grab if something does come out of left field at you and your passengers and the extra seconds to make that transfer to the wheel to take over could be crucial to the outcome of avoiding or being in an accident? I say this because I had a co-worker who was on cruise control back in the 80s on a busy highway in Chicago. She suffered a sudden blowout (with both hands on the wheel) and said the car jerked very hard to the side. The cruise control kept the car engaged at that speed until she could react and brake which she was trying to do while fighting the wheel. Touch the brake and AP's off and you're on your own.

I still see at this point in time that some type of steering wheel alerts is a good thing. I can only imagine what threads we'll have when the facial monitoring system goes in place and the system beeps at you.

100k+ nag-free hands-off miles of experience using AP say no, I do not agree at all. I've had plenty of emergency actions taken in those miles. Animals running into the road, children running into the road, trucks kicking up debris requiring instant action, truck blowouts directly ahead, idiot drivers of all kinds doing stupid things, two flat tires at speed (including a front tire blowout at 75 MPH), countless pothole avoidance maneuvers, and god knows how many other emergency actions that required instant responses that I easily avoided despite my hands being on my lap. Sorry, I'm paying attention to the road, and the time it takes for my hands to snap from my lap to the wheel to react to something is negligible, especially considering the action itself is going to be part of that movement. So the actual reaction time is the same, and the only delay caused by hands-not-on-the-wheel is the travel times of my hands to the wheel... which is likely in the low tens-of-milliseconds... if that.

At no point did my hands being in my lap vs resting on the wheel change the outcome of any scenario. If you're paying attention, this is a negligible difference in the total response time to an incident. I'd say it's virtually non-existent.

Overall, it's complete BS. It doesn't improve anything at all. I'd *love* for Tesla to release data proving otherwise... but that data definitely doesn't exist because the timed nags were a knee jerk "we have to do something to shut people up" reaction, not a thought out thing.

Edit: A note about the 80s incident you mentioned. This particular situation wouldn't happen with the EPAS system in a modern vehicle, especially in a Tesla with autopilot engaged. The system is pretty much holding the wheels where commanded, and can tell the difference between driver input and force applied at the wheels (from something like a blowout).

Ok, I am the last to defend Tesla on the crap they pull, and I absolutely agree they should not be forcing updates, BUT, your car being disabled because of an update, in court it would probably play out no different than your car breaking down. How is you have to go somewhere and your car is updating different than you have to go somewhere and your car won't start because the EMMC on the MCU failed due to too many logs, or simply your charge port won't let go of the charger, or the car won't start because something else broke down. Liability from Tesla would be the same for all such situations, which is limited to repairing the car in a reasonable time if the car is under warranty. Yes, you can think of some really expensive scenarios (I was going to play the lottery, I had the numbers all filled out, my Tesla was updating and I didn't make it but it turns out I would have won $800M - pay up Elon!) but it will all go back to the warranty - all car manufacturers warranty says they will fix when the car breaks down, they do not guarantee that the car will not break down.

Tesla making my car non-functional for a set period of time intentionally without my knowledge is a LOT different than the car just "breaking down"... this is a pretty flimsy argument.

A better analogy would be something like this: You own a vehicle from manufacturer X. Perfectly working. In the middle of the night, the manufacturer goes to your vehicle and starts removing and replacing components without your permission. While they're doing this, the car is not usable. You go to use the car... and can not, through no fault of your own and because of no mechanical defect of breakdown. I'm pretty sure manufacturer X is the liable party for any damages resulting from my inability to use my vehicle in this case.

The analogy above is pretty much exactly what Tesla is doing if they force an update without warning or consent. The car is perfectly fine, and without your knowledge they make it not usable for some period of time. No breakdown. That's just ridiculous to try and equate this to.

 

[whitex]

"Apply light force" is simply not a proxy for driver attentiveness.

For Tesla, the nags are meant to ensure you are using AP the way they intended, with both hands on the wheel at all times. Is anyone getting nags when using AP while both hands the wheel? There is of course an argument that it can be easily defeated - I totally agree there, it is definitely not user proof enough. Then there is an argument that both hands should not be required on the wheel when using AP, ok, but Tesla decided that AP does require it, so as long as they advertise it as such, everyone buying it should know what they are getting into. The only people that have a valid claim are people who purchased AP prior to Tesla implementing their "both hands on the wheel at all times" policy, no?

Yes, "apply light force" is a poor driver attention monitor, but that is all Tesla has at this point. There are better solutions out there, though some of them may be annoying as well (some will beep at you as soon as you take eyes off the road, to glance at a passenger for example). That is why Google (and few other researchers) have decided few years ago that Level 3 cannot be safely implemented - it is a huge challenge to keep driver's attention for long periods of time where driver interaction is not required - the better the self-driving gets, the harder it is to pay attention. Could Tesla do more, maybe in new cars where they could add more sensors or an interior camera to track your face, where you're looking, whether you are sleeping, etc. Unless of course you are fan of radical attention keeping, randomly when approaching concrete or metal obstacles, the car intentionally drives super close to them, not enough to crash, but enough to clip your mirror, unless you intervene (as you should). At $600 a piece, people will quickly learn to pay attention if for no other reason but due to fear of another broken mirror.

PS> Can someone be trained to use AP safely without nags, of course, but remember, Tesla AP is a mass market solution. Test pilots fly experimental planes safely all the time, it doesn't mean they are safe for all pilots to fly.

 

[kavyboy]

Is anyone getting nags when using AP while both hands the wheel?

Yes, I am consistently. It's only when I have both hands on that I get nags. One hand on the wheel never results in a nag because there's torque. If I fell asleep driving across west Texas with one hand flopped on the bottom of the wheel, I could go for hours while totally unconscious.

 

[whitex]

Tesla making my car non-functional for a set period of time intentionally without my knowledge is a LOT different than the car just "breaking down"... this is a pretty flimsy argument.

A better analogy would be something like this: You own a vehicle from manufacturer X. Perfectly working. In the middle of the night, the manufacturer goes to your vehicle and starts removing and replacing components without your permission. While they're doing this, the car is not usable. You go to use the car... and can not, through no fault of your own and because of no mechanical defect of breakdown. I'm pretty sure manufacturer X is the liable party for any damages resulting from my inability to use my vehicle in this case.

The analogy above is pretty much exactly what Tesla is doing if they force an update without warning or consent. The car is perfectly fine, and without your knowledge they make it not usable for some period of time. No breakdown. That's just ridiculous to try and equate this to.

I see your point, but depends how you frame it. Imagine the car would pre-load maps every morning based on some learned routine - the car knows you drive very day to work, so it will update the maps for just that. Now, if that updating wears out the storage, or simply there is a bad data in the maps causing the car computer to crash (actually happened with Tesla once), do you consider that car breaking down, or is that Tesla "removing and replacing components without your permission"? You might say "I want an option to reject map loading", ok, but then Tesla will not engage AP because the computer sees an HD map out of date, and possibly no map will even display since you said they can't load it from the internet and the car didn't come with any maps, and doesn't have sufficient storage to store entire USA map.

A simpler example would be a car automatically rebooting every night to clear memory leak issues and such. Now what if one of those reboots killed the car (boot sector is corrupt)? You could argue you could have driven it for few more days before you manually rebooted the car, so the car would break on your schedule instead of overnight, but still, it's just the car breaking down.

So, if you consider auto-update as part of normal operation, i.e. you purchased a dynamic system, then an update disabling the car is just a car malfunctioning.

All this said, I personally don't want this kind of dynamic product, unless all of these are met:

1. the updates are in the background, really fast (2 minutes max), or scheduled by me
2. the updates don't change the car functionality - so bug fixes, safety and security only
3. updates are thoroughly tested

Maybe it's just me, only time will tell if this Tesla model of selling unfinished product and delivering over time will be preferred by people over the traditional model of finishing the design and test of a product before selling it.

 

[whitex]

Yes, I am consistently. It's only when I have both hands on that I get nags. One hand on the wheel never results in a nag because there's torque. If I fell asleep driving across west Texas with one hand flopped on the bottom of the wheel, I could go for hours while totally unconscious.

Have you asked SC to check your sensors? As is today, the nags are only meant to detect people driving without hands on the wheel. It is not marketed as a system which will detect or do anything for you if you fall asleep or pass out while your hand is on the wheel.

 

[AWDtsla]

Have you asked SC to check your sensors? As is today, the nags are only meant to detect people driving without hands on the wheel. It is not marketed as a system which will detect or do anything for you if you fall asleep or pass out while your hand is on the wheel.

There's nothing wrong with his car. Two hands on wheel = net zero torque on sensor. The car doesn't detect hands, it detects torque. In fact, anyone driving properly with one hand or two means minimized torque applied to steering, nag goes off.

 

[mvotb]

You want to know if it will hurt sales? Well there is at least 3 people in this tread, maybe more, that would have bought a new Tesla that didn't. Me, Sorka, and White X. I am in the exact same spot as Sorka who said " Me too and I’m worried. I detest v9 so much that I cancelled plans to upgrade to the p100d when they announced to free ludicrous upgrade for existing Tesla openers. I’ll revist upgrading my P85DL if v9 ever fixes the many many problems it has." I would have purchased also if they hadn't shown me that they are willing to trash my UI as if a car is some cheap item to be obsolete in 3 years. No way would I buy a $100,000+ car that comes with a dysfunctional UI. Had they left the functionality as in preferably 7 or even 8, I would have pulled the trigger. Don't forget these are people that bought in to the EV revolution, put their money up to support Tesla, and promoted Tesla as much as possible. I don't know if it will hurt over all sales, in the short term, because Tesla is still be best EV available at the moment, but bad business decisions that negatively impact your own products and customers, is not a recipe for long term success. Worst part is I used to go out of my way to tell people about the car and promote Tesla. Now I prefer they don't ask because I would have to try and explain all of this

 

[mvotb]

Ok This is what my contract says "supercharging enabled". This is what my printed page said in 2016
Supercharging
You have free, unlimited Supercharging for your current Tesla. If you choose to sell your current Tesla, free Supercharging will transfer to the next owner. PERIOD. NOTHING ELSE.

So now that I have provided you with what my contract says, and you are such a legal genius, show me the code section that states that one party, to a two party contract, can unilaterally change the terms of the contract, through subsequent policy changes, or by any other means. I await your informative counsel.

Subject 2. wk057 has forgotten more about what you and MX are talking about, than both of you together, will ever know. Go look up his posts and all the things he has done Tesla wise, then stop talking and learn.

Tesla should hire wk057 to run their IT dept, they would be way ahead of the game, at any price. The idiots they have now are only hurting the company.

Hey sublime, still waiting for you to enlighten us poor folk, that you can't believe are so ignorant on the law. If you missed the question, this is it.

So now that I have provided you with what my contract says, and you are such a legal genius, show me the code section that states that one party, to a two party contract, can unilaterally change the terms of the contract, through subsequent policy changes, or by any other means. I await your informative counsel.

Still waiting.

 

[whitex]

There's nothing wrong with his car. Two hands on wheel = net zero torque on sensor. The car doesn't detect hands, it detects torque. In fact, anyone driving properly with one hand or two means minimized torque applied to steering, nag goes off.

Two perfectly balanced hands on the wheel will cause torque on the sensor each time AP moves the wheel, even slightly, as well as when you have bumps in the road, don't reposition your hands perfectly symmetrically when the wheel moves, etc. It would be practically impossible not to apply some torque to the wheel with 2 hands on the wheel when the wheel is moving due to road curvature or AP. The fact that the car cannot sense that tells me the sensors are not detecting it (bad sensor, bad callibration?)

 

[Censored]

Two perfectly balanced hands on the wheel will cause torque on the sensor each time AP moves the wheel, even slightly, as well as when you have bumps in the road, don't reposition your hands perfectly symmetrically when the wheel moves, etc. It would be practically impossible not to apply some torque to the wheel with 2 hands on the wheel when the wheel is moving due to road curvature or AP. The fact that the car cannot sense that tells me the sensors are not detecting it (bad sensor, bad callibration?)

I've done AP for thousands of miles cross country before. Some roads are so straight for miles that my car will still nag even with my hands on the wheel. I usually have to nudge the wheel slightly to stop it. It's also why I've kept my car in 2018.14 firmware, because I don't want more frequent nagging when I'm doing my cross-country autopiloting.

 

[AWDtsla]

Two perfectly balanced hands on the wheel will cause torque on the sensor each time AP moves the wheel, even slightly, as well as when you have bumps in the road, don't reposition your hands perfectly symmetrically when the wheel moves, etc. It would be practically impossible not to apply some torque to the wheel with 2 hands on the wheel when the wheel is moving due to road curvature or AP. The fact that the car cannot sense that tells me the sensors are not detecting it (bad sensor, bad callibration?)

Practically impossible? A good driver wouldn't be applying torque, period. Good doesn't mean someone who obeys the rules, it means someone who can drive it effectively around a racetrack. Applying torque scrubs off speed, and reduces traction over bumps. Minimum effective input is what you want.

There's nothing wrong with his car or my car.