Why AP 2.0 Won't Be Here Soon, and It Won't Be What You Think It Is

[182RG]

they did not have full control over it

hu·bris
ˈ(h)yo͞obrəs/
noun
noun: hubris

1. excessive pride or self-confidence.

 

[u00mem9]

The OP wrote this in early September. I have to agree he is looking more correct with each passing day.

I honestly see no way that the cars with "full self driving" will have that enabled before they are off warranty and have moved on to their second owners. Of course I would leave open the expectation that Tesla will release some half-arsed feature that drives San Fran to LA because they focused on that.

 

[⚡️ELECTROMAN⚡️]

I think the majority of people were not expecting full autonomous hardware. They were only hoping for an improved version of autopilot hardware. I don't think Tesla can pull off full autonomy with this new hardware, but it will be very interesting to watch them try. Tesla will be doing many great things for years to come. Very exciting to watch indeed.

 

[3Victoria]

hu·bris
ˈ(h)yo͞obrəs/
noun
noun: hubris

1. excessive pride or self-confidence.

Possibly. However, Tesla has been burned in the past for relying on single sources before. Also, the AP2 approach is narrow deep neural net starting with the raw pixels from the cameras. In other words, previously, Mobileye did the lower levels and handed off to Tesla softward for planning, mapping and driving. Now, in AP2, the neural net does the whole thing, and they are able to tweak the lower levels of the NN, which they couldn't with MBLY. So labelling them with the label hubris seems presumptious and unnecessarily disparaging, in this case.

 

[Kant.Ing]

It's either nVidia (they just want to sell more chips) or Tesla (more cars) is still clueless on FSD.

 

[FlatSix911]

Getting closer ... Elon Musk now says Tesla’s highly anticipated 8.1 update is coming March 28-29

11 days ago, Elon Musk said that Tesla’s highly anticipated 8.1 software update will come in “about 10 days”. Today, he updated the ETA to next “Tuesday-Wednesday”, but owners don’t have their hopes up since the update has been delayed on several occasions since last December.

What is still unclear is if the update will also bring the second generation Autopilot to feature parity with the first generation Autopilot or if it will only be UI updates for the entire fleet. In the past, the CEO has linked the 8.1 update with Autopilot 2.0 improvements to bring the system to parity with the first generation, but they have been pushing those updates in iterations of 8.0.

 

[Kant.Ing]

Hope HW1 cars will get what Tesla published back in Sept 2016, "When at a highway exit, it will favor marked lane lines in the direction of vehicle indicator (8.0)* or in the direction suggested by the navigation system if active (8.1)."

Upgrading Autopilot: Seeing the World in Radar

If so, AP1 will look like a complete departure from the current AP2 development.

 

[xyeahtony]

with all the doubts about full autonomy, am i the only one who's seen those demo videos where the tesla is successfully driving thru local roads with no assistance? Something like that seems good enough for me, it may be a long ways out until full rollout but i highly doubt 5 years....maybe a couple tops? and i only see government regulations standing in the way, nothing more.

 

[Sir Guacamolaf]

with all the doubts about full autonomy, am i the only one who's seen those demo videos where the tesla is successfully driving thru local roads with no assistance? Something like that seems good enough for me, it may be a long ways out until full rollout but i highly doubt 5 years....maybe a couple tops? and i only see government regulations standing in the way, nothing more.

Either that, or those videos were greatly faked up!

 

[whitex]

with all the doubts about full autonomy, am i the only one who's seen those demo videos where the tesla is successfully driving thru local roads with no assistance? Something like that seems good enough for me, it may be a long ways out until full rollout but i highly doubt 5 years....maybe a couple tops? and i only see government regulations standing in the way, nothing more.

Consider this, this video was shown last year, the current AP2 software doesn't do anything near that. Why do you think that is? If Tesla had this software working so well last year, why are they not releasing it? You can't say "lack of government approval" because they obviously got approval to release what is currently out there, so why not release the same functionality they got approval for but at the level shown in the video? Or, another example, in the video the car detects cross traffic and blind spots, why don't the current AP2 cars have such wonderful blind spot detection? No special government approval required as it would be just a warning feature, not an active one controlling the car.

As impressive as the video was, it was one video, possibly took many takes, possibly edited, perfect weather, etc. Also, the software could be optimized for that one path and that path alone. So one possibility is: yes the car drove itself on that one path, once out of 100 times it made it, the other 99 times the driver had to take over to prevent an accident. On any other path, the car never makes it with the current state of software. Of course all this is speculation, maybe there is another explanation (like they are holding back on the "good software" because they just want to keep people in suspense), but I don't see another reasonable explanation why the current functionality isn't anywhere near the video, other than the video was a marketing stretch.

 

[Reeler]

I know how they did the AP2 demo video:

 

[xborg]

Either that, or those videos were greatly faked up!

I wrote about it a few months ago.
Was self driving video scripted?

 

[zeydius]

hello guys

not an owner yet but i am concerned about this. I would like to put an order for a 3 but until AP2 is at least at AP1 level, i'll wait.

Hopefully next week will be a pivotal moment for the system

 

[xborg]

hello guys

not an owner yet but i am concerned about this. I would like to put an order for a 3 but until AP2 is at least at AP1 level, i'll wait.

Hopefully next week will be a pivotal moment for the system

As Model 3 orders are fully refundable and production is months away, you don't have to worry about this.
But if you have concerns, just worry about build quality and service&parts availability.

 

[HankLloydRight]

If Tesla had this software working so well last year, why are they not releasing it?
..... so why not release the same functionality they got approval for but at the level shown in the video?

.... why don't the current AP2 cars have such wonderful blind spot detection?

.....like they are holding back on the "good software" because they just want to keep people in suspense),

.....but I don't see another reasonable explanation why the current functionality isn't anywhere near the video, other than the video was a marketing stretch.

As a software developer, sometimes it takes 10 minutes to write an awesome block of code that does exactly what I want on the first try.

It then takes weeks or months to test it and integrate it with everything else before it can be released.

Just because they have demonstrable code that works in small snippets doesn't mean it's anywhere near close to public release. Especially with 'self driving cars' where actual lives could be at stake. If I screw something up, a website doesn't work for a few minutes. If Tesla misses an edge case, or fails regression testing, people could die. So I understand why AP2 is taking so long to be released. How long did it take Mobile-Eye to develop their code base working in AP1? Years. Tesla is full of extremely smart people, but things like this actually take time, and the more people you throw at it, the longer it could take (see: The Mythical Man-Month - Wikipedia).

 

[HankLloydRight]

This is an appropriate clip from the Wikipedia article, the "second system" being AP2:

The second-system effect
The second-system effect proposes that, when an architect designs a second system, it is the most dangerous system they will ever design, because they will tend to incorporate all of the additions they originally did not add to the first system due to inherent time constraints. Thus, when embarking on a second system, an engineer should be mindful that they are susceptible to over-engineering it.

And who is our favorite over-engineerer?

 

[croman]

Elon's timelines will be the death of Tesla...

 

[disagree]

Elon's timelines will be the death of Tesla...

It's one thing to miss timelines. It's entirely another thing to use deceptive timelines in order to motivate sales. The former is annoying. The latter is going to mire Tesla in court battles and destroy their reputation outside of the cult of personality.

 

[W84M3]

My god. This thread and these comments.

If you'd follow Tesla & Elon, you'd know he sets these timelines so aggressively to make things possible as fast as possible.

External timelines = internal timelines

Elon's timelines are what drives SpaceX & Tesla to disrupt sectors that have been untouched for 60 years.

 

[RogerHScott]

But if you have concerns, just worry about build quality and service&parts availability.

Don't leave out retro media capabilities -- you can always worry about retro media capabilities!