Washington Post: How Elon Musk knocked Tesla’s ‘Full Self-Driving’ off course

[FloridaJohn]

Interesting article in the Washington Post this morning about FSD.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/03/19/elon-musk-tesla-driving/

Some interesting quotes from the article:

In May 2021 Tesla announced it was eliminating radar on new cars. Soon after, the company began disabling radar in cars already on the road. The result, according to interviews with nearly a dozen former employees and test drivers, safety officials and other experts, was an uptick in crashes, near misses and other embarrassing mistakes by Tesla vehicles suddenly deprived of a critical sensor.

In interviews, former Tesla employees who worked on Tesla’s driver-assistance software attributed the company’s troubles to the rapid pace of development, cost-cutting measures like Musk’s decision to eliminate radar — which strayed from industry practice — and other problems unique to Tesla.

“The system was only progressing very slowly internally” but “the public wanted a product in their hands,” said John Bernal, a former Tesla test operator who worked in its Autopilot department. He was fired in February 2022 when the company alleged improper use of the technology after he had posted videos of Full Self-Driving in action.


“Elon keeps tweeting, ‘Oh we’re almost there, we’re almost there,’” Bernal said. But “internally, we’re nowhere close, so now we have to work harder and harder and harder.” The team has also bled members in recent months, including senior executives.

Around two years ago, a popular YouTuber captured footage of the software struggling to navigate San Francisco’s famously winding Lombard Street in a video that garnered tens of thousands of views. So Tesla engineers built invisible barriers into the software — akin to bumpers in a bowling alley — to help the cars stay on the road

Toward the end of 2020, Autopilot employees turned on their computers to find in-house workplace monitoring software installed, former employees said. It monitored keystrokes and mouse clicks, and kept track of their image labeling. If the mouse did not move for a period of time, a timer started — and employees could be reprimanded, up to being fired, for periods of inactivity, the former employees said.

The data showed reports of “phantom braking” rose to 107 complaints over three months, compared to only 34 in the preceding 22 months.

Andrej Karpathy, Tesla’s director of artificial intelligence, took a months-long sabbatical last year before leaving Tesla and taking a position this year at OpenAI, the company behind language-modeling software ChatGPT.

Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla’s director of Autopilot, has taken on work at Musk’s other company, Twitter, according to employees and documents reviewed by The Post.

“I do not believe you can remove the driver on this hardware suite, ever,” [Chuck Cook] said.

 

[jsmay311]

On the one hand, it’s reassuring to know that my opinions on FSD’s viability (or lack thereof), the foolishness and short-sightedness of removing radar, and Elon’s general mismanagement of FSD are shared by (at least some of) the Tesla engineers working on it.

On the other hand, it also hardens my pessimism that my car’s FSD will never realize its capabilities and value, which sucks.

 

[astrobill]

I came here to post the same article. Here it is as a gift link:

https://wapo.st/3TtVv0T

This article confirms what experts and industry watchers have been trying to convince legions of Musk fan boys of for over 18 months.

Specifically, Musk made them rip out radar as a cost-cutting measure, and Tesla engineers realized it was an absolutely horrible idea and tried everything they could to stop him. And once they did it, and also started disabling radar in existing vehicles, mishaps skyrocketed.

The additional details in this article are absolutely eye-opening. The anecdotes in this piece as well as the public actions we've seen from him as Twitter CEO make clear he acts impulsively and usually ignores expert advice.

And as we all know by now, radar is coming back to Tesla vehicles this year, now that the mistake has caught up with them.

@jsmay311: Minor point...it's not that FSD will "...never realize its capabilities..." as you put it. Rather, it's that FSD never HAD the capabilities Musk promised. Tesla is waaay behind companies like Waymo in terms of driving automation. Even BMW, Ford, and Cadillac have driver assistance features that are scored and rated more highly than Tesla's by major automotive magazines and testing houses.

 

[lowtek]

As Tesla's U.S. EV market share starts to drop significantly (and it has)

Source?

 

[jebinc]

Interesting article in the Washington Post this morning about FSD.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/03/19/elon-musk-tesla-driving/

Some interesting quotes from the article:

“The Great Charlatan” doing his best work.

CharlatanJuice, CharlatanJuice, CharlatanJuice.. *poof* he appears!

@uthatcher @EndlessPlaid

 

[uthatcher]

“The Great Charlatan” doing his best work.

CharlatanJuice, CharlatanJuice, CharlatanJuice.. *poof* he appears!

@uthatcher @EndlessPlaid

OH, C’MON! Bezos propaganda!

 

[lowtek]

While I agree that removing radar was premature, however, this reads like an Elon hit piece.

I’m glad radar is back and I bet we see retrofits for radar even though full HW4 retrofits probably won’t happen.

FSD will evolve faster with radar back in the mix.

 

[EndlessPlaid]

“The Great Charlatan” doing his best work.

CharlatanJuice, CharlatanJuice, CharlatanJuice.. *poof* he appears!

@uthatcher @EndlessPlaid

 

[jsmay311]

@jsmay311: Minor point...it's not that FSD will "...never realize its capabilities..." as you put it. Rather, it's that FSD never HAD the capabilities Musk promised.

“FSD will never realize it’s promised capabilities” would’ve been a better way for me to phrase it.

 

[TarmacSurfer]

It’s the Washington Post so Elon-hate is expected. That said, Tesla Vision is a complete failure and Elon’s slave-driving treatment of his employees won’t make up for his over promising and foolish decisions.

The faster Tesla gets a good CEO with some actual vision (not Tesla Vision) again, the better off they’re going to be.

Cybertruck will help, but it’s already way overdue and will be filling out in the midst of the worst recession since the 1970s… Tesla needs to up their game and focus on smaller, more affordable vehicles if they’re going to dominate - the late 70s / early 80s are repeating themselves.

 

[beatle]

While I agree that removing radar was premature, however, this reads like an Elon hit piece.

I’m glad radar is back and I bet we see retrofits for radar even though full HW4 retrofits probably won’t happen.

FSD will evolve faster with radar back in the mix.

Let's hope that it comes back to the cars that always had it.

I wish they'd refocus their attention on the highway behavior of AP and the potential to move up the levels of autonomy in those situations. There is such huge value there on road trips and stop and go commuting traffic, and with the limited road scenarios to deal with, I think they're capable. Seemed like they were 80% there with AP1 anyway.

 

[jebinc]

“FSD will never realize it’s promised capabilities” would’ve been a better way for me to phrase it.

See post #5

 

[jebinc]

It’s the Washington Post so Elon-hate is expected. That said, Tesla Vision is a complete failure and Elon’s slave-driving treatment of his employees won’t make up for his over promising and foolish decisions.

The faster Tesla gets a good CEO with some actual vision (not Tesla Vision) again, the better off they’re going to be.

Cybertruck will help, but it’s already way overdue and will be filling out in the midst of the worst recession since the 1970s… Tesla needs to up their game and focus on smaller, more affordable vehicles if they’re going to dominate - the late 70s / early 80s are repeating themselves.

Yes, the company deserves to have a “full time CEO,” and one with a full deck of cards.

 

[bobbyjae]

Sounds like Elon and Tesla have no idea what they are doing. This is why I have avoided using any Tesla self-driving features (even AP).

 

[EVNow]

Overall poor article - very dated. I mean they are talking about Karpathy leaving over as if it happened yesterday.

 

[mspohr]

Interesting article in the Washington Post this morning about FSD.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/03/19/elon-musk-tesla-driving/

Some interesting quotes from the article:

Random hearsay... FUD about FSD. Dredging up old news.

 

[FloridaJohn]

Overall poor article - very dated. I mean they are talking about Karpathy leaving over as if it happened yesterday.

Some of it was new to me. For example, I didn't know Elluswamy (head of FSD at Tesla) was working at Twitter now, too.

Other parts of it confirmed or added additional insight to information readers of this forum may already be aware of, but probably not the general public.

 

[EVNow]

Some of it was new to me. For example, I didn't know Elluswamy (head of FSD at Tesla) was working at Twitter now, too.

Other parts of it confirmed or added additional insight to information readers of this forum may already be aware of, but probably not the general public.

What I *actually* want to read about is a neutral story about the real ongoings in AP team. Not a hit piece using fired test drivers or labelers.

I guess that will come next decade - may be Karpathy can write a book when he has time.

 

[FloridaJohn]

What I *actually* want to read about is a neutral story about the real ongoings in AP team. Not a hit piece using fired test drivers or labelers.

I guess that will come next decade - may be Karpathy can write a book when he has time.

I agree, that would be nice. But I doubt we'll ever read how things are going from current employees, so we're left with "former workers" of various flavors.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

may be Karpathy can write a book when he has time.

Lol, the Tesla acolytes would throw him under the bus immediately, if he did.

Anyway, overall, I thought it was a poorly written story with poor communication of the issues facing Tesla and others in the autonomous driving space. Though of course many of the things it covered were also informative, I think the picture was really incomplete.

It’s a really hard problem, and won’t be solved for years. Even if Elon had been perfect, Tesla FSD would still be “way off course.” It misidentifies the issue (namely, this is an extremely hard problem that no one has yet solved). Elon has not helped in putting forward a decent driver assist though.