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Tesla's liability for promising FSD later this year

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I've wondered why they don't release something like a limited semi-FSD for local roads that you normally travel on. Routes where you've already "taught" the car where the stop signs and red lights are, maybe even bumps or potholes or any place you need to slow down, and it has them memorized, along with speeds you generally travel.

Because that's not, at all, how the system works.

Individual cars don't "learn" anything, and are not intended to.

(if they did it'd make troubleshooting anything a complete nightmare since you'd effectively have hundreds of thousands of cars all running different versions of the software)

Instead they use data from the fleet to update/train the "master" back at HQ, and then push out the same updates to everyone (eventually) in the fleet
 
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I've wondered why they don't release something like a limited semi-FSD for local roads that you normally travel on. Routes where you've already "taught" the car where the stop signs and red lights are, maybe even bumps or potholes or any place you need to slow down, and it has them memorized, along with speeds you generally travel. And if the computer is not yet good enough at reading the correct traffic light it could give you a pop-up screen or announcement asking you if you want to stop or go. If it "misses" a stop sign in training you can tell the car one is there and it would know to stop. To me that doesn't seem THAT hard, way easier than getting the computer to try and predict every scenario possible on any road anywhere, but maybe I'm missing something. ...
Good ideas. Machine learning technology is too limited to make that work now. Might be possible some years down the road. Learning currently works with lots of data, so for the individual car to learn it would either have to upload data to the cloud and download back a new model, or have lots of local data available, which increases costs due to memory required.
 
I don’t see any promise about FSD by end of year. Navigate on Autopilot within city limits is hugely different... you’re going to have to be attentive and ready to correct for potholes, construction zones, parades, lane reversals, stopped delivery trucks etc etc. We’re still a few years from true sit-back-and-relax self driving.
 
1. Believing the lie that it'd be more expensive later
2. To roll it into the loan
3. To theoretically be at the front of the line for any hardware upgrades necessary
4. Extra weight provided by that maybe-real-maybe-not video they released in 2016 to hype up FSD and make people think it might actually happen any time soon

Those were my reasons at the time.

I was a gullible idiot who broke his own rule about "never preorder", and it was a dumb decision for the same reason preordering anything else is dumb.
Brother, I’m sorry you feel that way. I personally don’t believe you are “gullible”. Everything in time. I put very little stock in promises. Patience is our watchword.
 
I've wondered why they don't release something like a limited semi-FSD for local roads that you normally travel on. Routes where you've already "taught" the car where the stop signs and red lights are, maybe even bumps or potholes or any place you need to slow down, and it has them memorized, along with speeds you generally travel. And if the computer is not yet good enough at reading the correct traffic light it could give you a pop-up screen or announcement asking you if you want to stop or go. If it "misses" a stop sign in training you can tell the car one is there and it would know to stop. To me that doesn't seem THAT hard, way easier than getting the computer to try and predict every scenario possible on any road anywhere, but maybe I'm missing something.

Speaking of that, does AP still try and recognize stop signs and lights? I remember something about that back this spring but haven't heard much since then. And will it do it only with EAP/FSD or basic AP too? Seems like if a stop warning comes up you could press an icon on the screen to stop or give a voice command.

The way the Tesla "machine", which is unlike everyone else's, learns is pretty much the same as how human learns to drive. You don't remember each routes or details of certain areas but just obtain general skill to handle every possible situation you might face anywhere. All the learning is done at the server level of course. From Karpathy's presentation the neural net already got pretty much all common situations figured out. It only needs data from edge cases, those you only see once every billion miles or more, to complete the training. Every car on the road is getting instructions to collect and send those needed data when it sees them but otherwise it does not need to record everything. When there is driver intervention like taking over the steering wheel or pushing the brake pedal it certainly will be sent to the server for analysis.
 
1. Believing the lie that it'd be more expensive later
2. To roll it into the loan
3. To theoretically be at the front of the line for any hardware upgrades necessary
4. Extra weight provided by that maybe-real-maybe-not video they released in 2016 to hype up FSD and make people think it might actually happen any time soon

Those were my reasons at the time.

I was a gullible idiot who broke his own rule about "never preorder", and it was a dumb decision for the same reason preordering anything else is dumb.

You still could have done the right thing (the price may indeed increase). Either way you're the one who decided to do that. Even if it turns out to be a wrong one I would never publicise my stupidness if I were you.
 
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Perhaps I'm using the terms "learn" and "teach" too loosely, maybe "training" (as in a pet trick) is a better analogy. I'm thinking of a simpler system where the car is just recording the coordinates of a stop sign or traffic light etc at a certain GPS location along the routes that you travel most often so it knows when to expect them. If you're not on one of your normal routes it would be little better than what's out there now.

You could "train" your car by driving a route, and whenever something noteworthy comes up you drop a specific pin on the map or give a voice notation of what is there. If it's just for your personal routes it shouldn't take up much memory, it would basically be log entries at predetermined GPS coordinates with a set of options of what to do. The car would chime or tell you there's a stop or whatever coming up. Then what you do could be executed by something like a voice command, pressing an icon on the screen, manual operations (swerving, braking, slowing down, etc) or have the computer do it if it's capable enough, though some form of confirmation would be preferred.

No mistake, this is not true FSD and is not how computers are being designed to handle self driving. But it could be a stopgap approach that a driver could use as an aid for their personal commute until real FSD is truly ready, which could be quite some time away. At least it would be giving customers who shelled out good money for FSD something to tide them over.
 
Perhaps I'm using the terms "learn" and "teach" too loosely, maybe "training" (as in a pet trick) is a better analogy. I'm thinking of a simpler system where the car is just recording the coordinates of a stop sign or traffic light etc at a certain GPS location along the routes that you travel most often so it knows when to expect them. If you're not on one of your normal routes it would be little better than what's out there now.

You could "train" your car by driving a route, and whenever something noteworthy comes up you drop a specific pin on the map or give a voice notation of what is there. If it's just for your personal routes it shouldn't take up much memory, it would basically be log entries at predetermined GPS coordinates with a set of options of what to do. The car would chime or tell you there's a stop or whatever coming up. Then what you do could be executed by something like a voice command, pressing an icon on the screen, manual operations (swerving, braking, slowing down, etc) or have the computer do it if it's capable enough, though some form of confirmation would be preferred.

No mistake, this is not true FSD and is not how computers are being designed to handle self driving. But it could be a stopgap approach that a driver could use as an aid for their personal commute until real FSD is truly ready, which could be quite some time away. At least it would be giving customers who shelled out good money for FSD something to tide them over.
As I understand, with the neural net...self-learning (?). We are a ways away from this premise.
 
Perhaps this has been discussed but I didn't see anything. We are in middle of July and the website still says FSD by end of year (responding to traffic lights and driving in the city).

Assuming this doesn't happen which I believe to be the case what's Teslas liability on this? Would they be forced to refund FSD cost? Return the whole car? It's not unreasonable for the average Joe - who isn't aware of the Musk time line - to expect a multi billion dollar company to deliver on a spelled out promise while purchasing a 50k car.

Let me end by saying I'm a huge Tesla fan and hope FSD comes quickly. Just wondering how this could effect Tesla if we get to end of year without having the things they are promising in a product.
Yes, Tesla would be liable for refunding the entire cost of the car, if it can be proven that was the basis on which the car was purchased. They could also be liable for opportunity cost - the money that could have been earned if invested elsewhere, with the same $50K
People will argue “but Tesla qualified their statement of FSD with certain caveats” - that isn’t necessarily sufficient under the law & is for a judge to interpret.
There is also a concept in law known as ‘reasonableness’ - what would a reasonable person do? What can be reasonably expected? What is a reasonable time? etc, etc, etc
 
I love the car but the FSD and especially enhanced summon was definitely a false advertising item. In early April when I ordered YouTube was filled with videos of it working, website listed it as a feature. I only figured out it wasn't in the car after I got it and started doing research online. That's not cool.
 
I love the car but the FSD and especially enhanced summon was definitely a false advertising item. In early April when I ordered YouTube was filled with videos of it working, website listed it as a feature. I only figured out it wasn't in the car after I got it and started doing research online. That's not cool.

Same here, but I figure it will be here soon enough. In the mean time, I'm having fun.
 
I love the car but the FSD and especially enhanced summon was definitely a false advertising item. In early April when I ordered YouTube was filled with videos of it working, website listed it as a feature. I only figured out it wasn't in the car after I got it and started doing research online. That's not cool.

There are no videos on Youtube of FSD and Advance Summon working 100%...

Musk indicated that FSD would be feature complete at the end of 2019 - No rollout date is mentioned that I am aware of.

Anyone who bought into the FSD option early, should have known what they were buying at the time as it doesn't mention secific rollout dates for these feature...

I bought FSD with the thought it it would and could happen.... As much as I wish the time frame was in reach, I am happy and will wait for it to possibly happen.
 
There are no videos on Youtube of FSD and Advance Summon working 100%...

There's a number of youtube videos showing advanced summon working.

(and Tesla had a sped-up FSD demo video released on autonomy day- that's on top of the now-known-as-BS 2016 one they released ahead of AP2)




Th
Musk indicated that FSD would be feature complete at the end of 2019 - No rollout date is mentioned that I am aware of.

Anyone who bought into the FSD option early, should have known what they were buying at the time as it doesn't mention secific rollout dates for these feature...


The FSD order page on tesla.com not only says advanced summon is available NOW (and it has been lying about that for months now), it also lists a number of other features available specifically by "later this year"-

Tesla.com said:
Full Self-Driving Capability (what they claim it does today)
  • Summon: your parked car will come find you anywhere in a parking lot. Really.
Coming later this year:

  • Recognize and respond to traffic lights and stop signs.
  • Automatic driving on city streets.
(bold added to the relevant bits)
 
There's a number of youtube videos showing advanced summon working.

(and Tesla had a sped-up FSD demo video released on autonomy day- that's on top of the now-known-as-BS 2016 one they released ahead of AP2)


There are no videos of Advance Summon working correctly... There are a few videos of it slowly moving from a parking spot to the driver.... No where does it show it working full featured.... Musk has indicated publicly that it still has allot of issues that need to be resolved...

I have seen Advance Summon in the wild and it still has a long way to go...

The FSD video was specific to the presentation to show how far they have come... There is no mention of how soon it would be released... It was for demo purposes only...

It's all very clear....

Trust me when I say I have been all in on EAP and FSD from the start.... I bought it with no promises of when I would receive it... I paid the most expensive price for these features (July 2018 - 11k).... But I also knew from the start (after doing my research) that when I bought these features that they didn't actually exist...

I was purchasing because I was optimistic I would see these features during the ownership of the car and possibly enjoy the slow rollout of software... The slow rollout of new features or enhancing features I already have gives me the feeling of getting a new car everytime...
 
There are no videos of Advance Summon working correctly...

Of course there are.


There are a few videos of it slowly moving from a parking spot to the driver.... No where does it show it working full featured....

Nothing about speed is listed anywhere in the description of the feature.

And videos were posted a week or so ago of the most recent version that's significantly faster too.



The FSD video was specific to the presentation to show how far they have come... There is no mention of how soon it would be released... It was for demo purposes only...

I just quoted you from tesla.com about when parts of it would be released, specifically.
 
That's actually how class action lawsuits work. Lawyers take up the class action at no charge and they don't do it on "behalf of the owners". The purpose is to create a financial disincentive for bad behavior, not to compensate the class. If you want to be compensated, you simply opt-out of the class and then go hire your own attorney. I'm always amazed that people think they should get a free legal ride from a class action lawsuit.

In the case of the earlier Autopilot / FSD class action that Tesla settled, if you were in the class and did not opt out then you were paid based on a sliding scale of how long you had your car without the features. I doubt the current Tesla website language would support a class action if they don't deliver FSD at the end of the year - but lawsuits are easy to file.

I do wonder why anyone would have purchased FSD prior to the switch from the EAP package to a "FSD" package. At least now, you are getting features with what Tesla now calls FSD. It's not full self driving, but there's good driver assist functionality and the price is not unreasonable in comparison to what other brands charge for similar features.

But again, Elon didn't promise FSD by the end of this year. He just said that they expected to hit some purely internal development milestone.
 
Good ideas. Machine learning technology is too limited to make that work now. Might be possible some years down the road. Learning currently works with lots of data, so for the individual car to learn it would either have to upload data to the cloud and download back a new model, or have lots of local data available, which increases costs due to memory required.

That's not remotely how modern AI systems work. They don't learn on-the-fly. That's just an obsolete SciFi concept.

Instead, the AI software self-configures based on being presented with millions and million and millions of pictures that humans have categorized for them. Then that configuration is loaded down into the car.

Your car's software is completely incapable of learning.
 
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