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Volkswagen bags Autopilot program manager Alexandre Haag

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Tesla HQ to NYC contains only 2 miles of surface street.
Secondly it means nothing in the context of FSD cause Highway Autonomy isn't FSD

I'm sorry. Where did I say FSD?

Why aren't you acknowledging my other comment about additional Level 4 features?

I don't believe you're correct about the amount of surface streets as noted in previous posts.

And, you conveniently (?) didn't answer my question about other production cars capable of making a 2,800+ mile highway trip. Examples please?

You also used an absolute term "means nothing" to describe a fully autonomous trip across country, even only on highways. It might be less significant than you think, but surely it doesn't mean "nothing."

My one and only point is that a senior programmer with the above (which also assumes considerable progression toward Level 3/4 over the next 8 months) under his belt is more valuable than one who doesn't. I'm not saying a cross country demo = FSD, much less FSD on surface streets.
 
Highways by definition don't have crossing left turns, or semis making them.

My understanding is there are different kinds of highways:

1) A highway with controlled access is called a freeway. Thus, freeway is a subset of highways.
2) A highway may not have controlled access and it may have stores, shops, people, intersections, traffic lights... In that case it is also a highway but not a controlled access highway and not a freeway.
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"
"State highway"
Any highway which is acquired, laid out, constructed, improved or maintained as a State highway pursuant to constitutional or legislative authorization. [SHC Sect 24]. Elsewhere, this is defined as a way or place of whatever nature, publicly maintained and open to the use of the public for purposes of vehicular travel. Highway includes street."


California Driver handbook says:

Page 18:

"Pedestrians are not permitted on any toll bridge or highway crossing, unless there is a sidewalk and signs stating pedestrian traffic is permitted. If there are no sidewalks, walk facing oncoming traffic (see graphic on page 18). Do not walk or jog on any freeway where signs tell you that pedestrians are not allowed. Do not walk or jog in a bike lane unless there is no sidewalk."

Page 28:
"the maximum speed limit is 55 mph on a two-lane undivided highway and for vehicles towing trailers."

Tam Driving School (my name but not related to me) has a simple explanation that says you can even jog on a sidewalk of a highway but not freeway:

 
Whatever is going on at Tesla, Waymo will soon be running a full autonomous taxi service in Phoenix. All the way from selecting destination on an android phone to being dropped at their chosen destination. Tesla doesn't appear anywhere close to this level of development.

Trying to do level 3 is probably a strategic mistake.
 
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For me it drove like a 12 year old today. It still hunts the lane. It does okay in straight sections, but wanders dangerously close to curves. In a 20 mile test it completely missed one modest curve on the highway. I had to yank the wheel.

Biggest problem is it seems to only look 50 ft ahead. Kind of like landing an airplane looking at the nose and not all the way down the runway.
 
There might be something to this thinking, because Tesla is obviously taking a rather different approach than most other manufacturers.

Let me explain what I mean.

Tesla is targeting a moving goal, in a way, with their AP2 system.

AP1 was clearly a Level 2 driver assistance system, ran by a MobilEye Q3 designed for a Level 2 driver assistance system. It pushed the envelope beyond with what MobilEye was comfortable, but still, it was a Level 2 system like so many others.

But with AP2 Tesla threw enough hardware (some might argue barely enough) to implement self-driving, at least in theory - and made statements about reaching Levels 3, 4 and all the way to 5, which is full, driverless autonomy. Yet what Tesla has released since then and what is the wording of everything they've done, is still build more Level 2 type of driver assistance systems, and given the slow rate of progress, it may be a long, long while before Tesla relieves the driver of the responsibility of driving - a necessary pre-requisite of Level 3 and beyond. Indeed, on legal responsibility they differ from the rest of the industry as well that take responsibility of their car when self-driving, while Tesla has said to put that responsibility on the owner/insurance even when self-driving is introduced.

Contrast this with e.g. what Audi is doing. So far everything they have released has been Level 2 driver aids, of course, but starting with the new Audi A8 later this year, they are introducing the first Level 3 self-driving car. While limited to set circumstances and speeds, this is a dramatically different proposition what Tesla is doing: Audi takes responsibility of driving that car. Think about that distinction for a moment, they have been working on this for years and years (their self-driving hardware prototypes being mainstay of shows) and have an impressively larger sensor suite than AP2... and they are taking responsibility of that driving later in 2017 in a production car.

What this means is, starting this year, in a given speed and road type range, an Audi A8 you can readily buy will take the steering wheel and allow you to start reading a book or typing away at the computer. It will be Level 3, so you will still have to be in the drivers seat, but you will be legally allowed to do something else, not hold the steering wheel, not look at the road - at all. The only thing you are required to do is within a reasonable time, around 15 seconds perhaps, stop what you are doing and take control, if the car deems the cirumstances are changing to beyond its control. But the car is required to give advance notice in that region (e.g. 15 seconds), during which time it will remain in control.

What's more, Audi will take legal responsibility for the self-driving of its cars. Legal responsibility. The trend is the same for other larger car companies.

Now, think about what the AP2 (and to an extent AP1) looks like in comparison. Not what it may look a few years down the road, but what the roadmap towards that looks like for the next year or two. It is obvious Tesla is different in how it pushes the envelope constantly, but also how it is not targeting a set of requirements well (through years of work in the shadows), but instead working on from a more agile, practical point of view in improving the car's abilities and including just enough hardware to keep making that progress. Because of what and how Tesla does it, it means they can not in good conscience take responsibility for it, so even as the features of how well a Tesla drives (even with AP1) start to approach Level 3, it can be reasonably expected Tesla will not label it true self-driving as Audi does. Tesla's may sooner or later be Level 2 cars that can drive like Level 3, maybe 4...

I am fully resigned to the possibility that the AP2 car I have may not self-drive in the legal meaning of the word for a long time. I think it may well reach Level 4 type of capability, perhaps sooner than other manufacturers, and yet still tell me I need to keep looking at the road all the time and be ready to take control within milliseconds notice at any time. And this means what we get in Tesla, perhaps for the entire duration of AP2 hardware's facotory shipping lifetime (i.e. the time before AP3 hardware appears, though I expect AP2 to continue get updates as a subset-system of AP3 afterwards), is a driver's aid, perhaps even a very advanced driver's aid at some date, but not a self-driving system. Maybe this changes in two years, but I am talking about the meanwhile...

In that meanwhile the driver in the Audi is reading a book.

Given past precedence on how much AP1 failed to reach its optimistic original marketing, it is likely AP2 will fail to reach it as well. That said, I do think it is possible Level 3-5 capability, with its legal self-driving, may appear one day in a limited set of circumstances - but AP2 will probably remain a driver's aid only for a long time before that happens.

Finally, there is the point that Tesla has been reported to have basically two teams working on AP2: the AP1 parity/early EAP team and the full FSD team, with their respective codebases. It has also been heard that Tesla has decided to move people and focus from the latter to the former, so in essence moving brainpower from self-driving to driver's aid, because EAP is creating more immediately shippable features than a future FSD. This would jive with what the reports are saying about this Tesla employee. If he is hot on solving self-driving in every sense of that word, working on a glorified adaptive cruise control might not be his idea of a motivating challenge.
 
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AP2 has been very practical for me for the past 700 miles. I still have to manually adjust the system to posted speed signs but otherwise it relieved me lots of brakings and steering. When I arrive to Los Angeles stop-and-go freeway traffic, AP2 has be very useful. No more road rage for me!

For me it drove like a 12 year old today. It still hunts the lane. It does okay in straight sections, but wanders dangerously close to curves. In a 20 mile test it completely missed one modest curve on the highway. I had to yank the wheel.

Biggest problem is it seems to only look 50 ft ahead. Kind of like landing an airplane looking at the nose and not all the way down the runway.

Be that as it may, all of that is quite beside the point.

A good or a bad driver's aid is still just a driver's aid, not self-driving. So old Level 2 stuff, just done good or bad depending on who you ask. Beyond vague marketing talk of Levels 3 to 5, Tesla has outlined no timeline or even whether EAP will ever be anything other than a driver's aid at Level 2, where you still have to keep your eye on the road and be ready to immediately take over any time.

FSD, of course, has been said to do actual self-driving. But no, adding some more driver's aid based on FSD cameras is not FSD. It is just a more advanced Level 2 system. Real self-driving on a Tesla is still an unknown period of time away even in limited circumstances.
 
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Huge grain of salt because we have no idea of this guy's financial/family/career ambitions, but this would be a very strange time to leave if they're going to demo a fully autonomous LA to NYC trip in the next 8 months (or add significant strides toward Level 4 with the new hardware). One can only imagine how much more he'd be worth to VW (or any company) after being a senior programmer on that.

We have heard Tesla has moved resources from FSD to EAP, which is a move from self-driving to driver's aids. He could have been displeased with that.

Tesla has the predicament that unlike other car companies, they have not been working on real self-driving targets for years in the background, instead they have been working on driver's aids - first based on MobilEye's technology and now on their own - and have pushed those driver's aids closer to self-driving in terms of capabilities, but not in terms of responsibility taking. Getting EAP back up to parity with AP1 and beyond as a driver's aid is crucial for them in terms of promised features and this approach.

So Tesla is scrambling. They have raised the bar of expectations on what their driver's aids do (but make no mistake, they still are just Level 2 driver's aids), yet at the some time want to advance self-driving much faster than their technological maturity might normally allow. All this with limited resources. I can see it possibly being a frustrating environment to work in. Exciting perhaps in that envelope is being pushed faster than reason might allow, but at the same time possibly quite erratic too, as the focus can change depending on what market message needs to be shown this quarter, instead of targeting a clear future list of capabilities.

All the ridicule of Level 2 aids the competition has aside, which have been developed from very different points of view than Tesla's, many of their self-driving programs are quite different and solid beasts behind the scenes. When they come out, they will come out in a much more mature form than Tesla's. They must, they are promising actual self-driving from the start, the only limiter being that that self-driving is limited to certain circumstances and different roles the driver has as a backup (described in the Levels 3-5).
 
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And this means what we get in Tesla, perhaps for the entire duration of AP2 hardware's facotory shipping lifetime (i.e. the time before AP3 hardware appears, though I expect AP2 to continue get updates as a subset-system of AP3 afterwards), is a driver's aid, perhaps even a very advanced driver's aid at some date, but not a self-driving system.
Sounds good to me.
 
The A8 autopilot is only operational up to 30 mph or so isn't it?

Yes, I believe the 2017 released Audi A8 traffic jam assist has Level 3 up to 60 kph, so I guess 37 mph? It is intended for traffic jam conditions on highways.

However, more important than such details is what it is the harbringer of. It is the first car with Audi's self-driving hardware installed. Consider it Audi's first AP2 car - with the exception that Audi does not ship partial software, no work in progresses. Perhaps it will not get any better through constant software updates (or maybe it will), but it will get better through subsequent model years at the very least. This is the first use of a completely new autonomous platform from Audi. They are conservative because they have chosen to be responsible for it, but already that hardware could do much more if they so chose.

Most importantly, so far it seems it will be the first production car that allows you to relinquish control as well as attention and that does take responsibility for the car, even if for limited periods of time. Tesla of course has a chance at beating Audi at this still because they have the hardware out there already, but from the EAP of today the leap to a late 2017 EAP that you could read a book with seems ginormous. Optimists can of course have faith in that secondary codebase...
 
AnxietyRanger said:
And this means what we get in Tesla, perhaps for the entire duration of AP2 hardware's facotory shipping lifetime (i.e. the time before AP3 hardware appears, though I expect AP2 to continue get updates as a subset-system of AP3 afterwards), is a driver's aid, perhaps even a very advanced driver's aid at some date, but not a self-driving system.
Sounds good to me.

It doesn't sound particularly bad to me either. But real Level 3 EAP sure would sound even better.