As has been hashed out in this thread several times, far too much of the driving population is transferring almost all of their attention to a movie, a book, the internet, or whatever while they are the ones controlling the car. People are already so bored driving they’re engaging in other activities. Obviously it is nobody on this website, but there is not a single day I don’t see other drivers staring into their laps.
The other thing with self driving, as it is now in Teslas, it removes tedium. Creeping along in stop and go traffic? Let the car handle it. Cruising for endless miles? Let the car handle it. I can (mostly) relax and listen to music or a podcast.
None of that takes away from having fun. Curvy mountain road? Now it’s my turn to drive.
Remember back in the 2000s when Apple was receiving so much of the brunt of the tech hate? Apple was incredibly successful, and releasing genuinely innovative products, so a certain type of person felt the need to demonstrate themselves as being extra edgy and independent by hating on Apple for often ridiculous reasons.
The point is this anti-technology “technophile” has been around for a long time, but I totally get your point that it seems to suffuse so much more tech reporting now. I’m not even talking about the Ed Zitron types who love technology, the internet, and social media, but hate what the tech companies are doing to it all. Him, and the other, better tech reporters are sad that so much is shit. The problems is the ones who seem gleeful that it is shit.
Definitely. The company I work for (which you’ve heard of, but in the early 2000s was a much smaller company) had one of those people all to ourselves. Basically made a whole career from railing on us. We weren’t beyond criticism either, then or now, but this guy seemed genuinely mentally ill. Still don’t know if it was real or just the result of playing to a crowd.
These guys have always been around, but it seems like their schtick is utterly pervasive now. The Ed Zitrons and Cory Doctorows are fine; they can at least write well, and form a coherent argument, even if it seems a bit unidirectional. But they’re more of an exception today.
So while the current Robotaxi trial still has human monitors, they have in fact had a completely unoccupied car drive around by their June deadline. On highways too, no less. The video should be fun.
No surprise there. And they haven’t made any claims that this is anything but a one-off demo, at least for the time being. It’ll be a while before all cars in a 200-mile radius are self-delivering. Still, this is a good start.
I wonder if the fact that it doesn’t contain passengers made it easier to get permission to drive without a safety monitor. Still a potential risk to other drivers, but not to its own occupants.
My guess is that it was a fairly short drive just a little more complicated than the Summon function in a parking lot. As much of an FSD fan boy that I am, I don’t trust that function at all.
Could be. Or they just already had the data that it was an easy route.
It’s possible they had a safety car following as well, like some of the pre-launch Robotaxi testing. They claim there’s no one in the car and no interventions, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t very careful with the monitoring.
No way to wriggle out of this being a true camera-only L4 system now. Driving around on a wide variety of roads, from surface streets to highways, with unprotected left turns, traffic circles, and other complex behavior. Looks pretty wild just cruising down the highway with no one inside.
Yay, 15 miles that were almost assuredly trained for as much as possible. I’m sure that’ll knock the inauspicious launch of the RoboTaxi out of the headlines. When’s it going to be able to deliver itself from L.A. to Times Square? That was originally promised at the end of 2016.
You do know that Elon is the person who placed those goalposts, correct? No need to move those as he still hasn’t reached them. Did you miss my post filled with his claims for past years that still haven’t come true?
I’m talking about statements made in this thread. I’ve harped on the OP enough. But scabpicker said similar things:
Given that we actually have an example where you could climb in the back and play banjo while the car drives you somewhere, it seems that was about 15 years too pessimistic.
Ultimately though, I’m 100x more interested in what Tesla is actually achieving today (and others, too) than in who-said-what-when. Digging up bad predictions can be fun but ultimately meaningless. Though it must be said that the bet on no-LIDAR turned out to be the right one.
Despite justified skepticism …the guys that own Teslas on the mcycle forum I am on use autonomous driving on a regular basis.
They know they are guinea pigs and I suspect most do…and don’t care or mind.
The vision system does remarkably well on rainy, wet roads with the sun creating glare. There are times when I am having difficulty seeing the lines on the road due to the glare, but the car is seeing them perfectly fine. This is typical, and seems to be a condition the cameras handle very well.
The car warns that “self driving may be degraded,” so I can see why they would not want to do driverless operations under heavy enough precipitation. In my experience though, FSD works the same when it’s “degraded” as it does at any other time.
If visibility drops low enough FSD will disengage, but in my experience that is under severe enough conditions that humans shouldn’t be driving, either.
