"When in Doubt, Build It Stout, of Something that You Know About."
That is a NASA AMES statement from the mid 1980s. It applied to anything that does not fly.
It is about dealing with doubt, design margin and time. The time it takes to design something is related to how close you are operating to "does not work" or "does not fit." For example if a miniaturization project is to provide all the functions in half the volume, it can take twice as long to develop the product as you are always running into yourself - lots of churn.
I would suggest that The WYMO choice of a minivan as a safety testbed will double the length of time required to accomplish full self driving - As the vehicle has little safety margin when driven by a trained driver. Introducing an unskilled driver puts the WAYMO system closer to an accident that hurts a person.
These specs have been culled for merging and accident avoidance.
Model X Specs
2021 Tesla Model X Review, Pricing, and Specs
Top gear, 30-50 mph: 1.3 sec
Top gear, 50-70 mph: 2.1 sec
Braking, 70-0 mph: 172 ft
Roadholding, 300-ft-dia skidpad: 0.86 g*
Pacifica Hybrid Specs
https://hmg-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/files/chryslerpacificaehybridltinitial2018-1536087663.pdf
Top gear, 30–50 mph: 3.3 sec
Top gear, 50–70 mph: 4.5 sec
Braking, 70–0 mph: 187 ft
Roadholding, 300-ft-dia skidpad: 0.81 g
Which platform is more forgiving for teaching "How to Drive" with no accidents?
There is a 2 second difference in 30 to 50 mph acceleration times. That means how much more computation time to correctly choose a merge gap?
Here is the obligatory Venn Diagram that says Tesla is the only company with the intrinsic safety margin to deliver FSD in a timely manner.
This post is a deeper look into TLSA differentiation. This deeper look justifies a much high price than is currently observed.
The benefits of performance margin for safely teaching autonomous driving is not a new discovery, I recognized this 5 years ago...
I am writing this here because of disappointment with the depth of analysts' thinking on TSLA. The shallowness of the work compared to the amount of money they steer is astounding. Spelling things out (adding understanding margin on communication) may help people in general recognize that TSLA is currently undervalued.
