
Tesla’s Summon-Your-Car Feature Spurs U.S. Safety Inquiry - kgwgk
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-02/tesla-s-summon-your-car-feature-spurs-u-s-to-ask-about-safety
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toddmorey
I worry that Tesla's self-driving ambitions put their entire mission
(sustainable transit) and products at risk. Being conservative just isn't in
their DNA—and you NEED that DNA to work on autonomy.

Advanced Summon is a good example of this problem. You might say it needs to
be deployed to get the data needed to refine it. But they could have spent
more time silently collecting data, comparing what the computer would do with
what real drivers do. And they could have at least staged the rollout to
happen much more slowly.

I just don't think they should have released it this widely in the current
state. It's disingenuous to label it as beta and ask users to uncover the
kinks with real risk to life and property.

~~~
microtherion
Electric cars may be less polluting, but that doesn't make them "sustainable
transit". It's a band-aid on the many problems caused by car-centric
development, which does nothing to solve the fundamental issues:

[https://www.donkey.bike/wp-
content/uploads/2018/02/autonomou...](https://www.donkey.bike/wp-
content/uploads/2018/02/autonomous_vehicles_space_problem.jpg)

~~~
chrisstanchak
If the same car can do 20 trips on its own that graphic looks completely
different.

~~~
dragontamer
Because now 20 cars will hold less than 20 people on the average. 20 cars on
the road with many of them autonomous may only have 15 or maybe only 10
people.

~~~
zaroth
It’s a good point, but counting the taxi driver as increasing efficiency is
disingenuous.

~~~
dragontamer
Taxis are an invalid alternative.

The truly "Green" alternatives are electric scooters, bikes, busses, and
subways.

Electric scooters seem to be the winner in point-to-point movement within a
city, although we're going to need to figure out proper safety regulations
moving forward (scooter speed limits, road vs sidewalk, etc. etc.) Although
still immature, the explosion of scooter-based inner city travel gives me a
lot of optimism to that methodology.

20 people on 20 scooters will be more space efficient, cheaper, and
environmentally friendly. They move slower than cars, but seem ideal for urban
point-to-point travel under 2 miles. Apparently, Segway had the right idea
(but the tech wasn't mature enough. Modern Li-Ion batteries + Scooter rentals
+ Scooter Ride Sharing apps didn't exist in the 00s, but today make it a
reasonable technology to use).

\-------------

Given a good enough bus network, scooters should work for Point-to-bus-to-
point travel, or Point-to-subway-to-point travel, since they're small enough
to carry in a backpack.

~~~
zaroth
I think this is just wildly out of touch. Yes, a family of 4 with two small
children, getting around on buses and scooters carried in their backpacks.

~~~
dragontamer
Children in my area are largely carried around in school busses. I couldn't
drive in High School and relied upon walking to the bus stop.

There are unorganized groups ("groups of friends") who travel together from
bus-stop back into their neighborhoods. This is just walking. And I don't
think I grew up in a very urban area.

\---------

Scooters are helpful when walking further distances for personal city travel.
But... when it comes to school, busses are extremely efficient at the job.
Probably the best at the job: a large group of people are getting to the same
location at roughly the same time.

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neural_thing
The feature is not ready. The only reason Tesla pushed it out this early is
that they want to recognize some of the Autopilot deferred revenue in Q3 to
mask a YoY decline in revenue driven by lower ASPs, which damages their growth
story.

~~~
cloudwalking
Damaged growth story? Tesla delivered more cars this quarter than ever before:
[https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/02/tesla-
tsla-3q-2019-productio...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/02/tesla-
tsla-3q-2019-production-and-delivery-numbers.html)

Lower ASP is to be expected as people are buying many more (and increasing)
Model 3 than Model S/X.

~~~
ianferrel
Selling more cars is great, but YoY reduction in revenue will not justify the
valuation of TESLA stock.

~~~
cloudwalking
Depends how you define "reduction in revenue." YoY growth in units but
reduction in per-unit profit is often a very good sign. See Apple when they
introduced the iPod mini. Average sale price went down but number of units
continued to increase.

~~~
ianferrel
Total revenue.

Apple did not make less total revenue when they introduced a lower-priced
iPod. The claim above was that Tesla would have had a reduction in total
revenue without being able to book pre-sales for this half-baked feature.

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Animats
Even at low speed, Tesla seems to still have trouble avoiding stationary
obstacles.

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davis_m
All of the videos I have seen of the summon feature have been pretty bad. A
lot of time the vehicle can't seem to figure out what to do. I imagine that
will get better with time, but if I had a Tesla I wouldn't be using it now.

I'm surprised they released the feature as-is.

~~~
sixQuarks
If you use it with a little common sense, it works great. I just got the
software update today and tested it out in a parking lot that had minimal foot
traffic, worked perfectly.

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mitasu-hachi
Does the summon-your-car feature use the same technology that full self-
driving robotaxi mode will use when it's released in under a year?

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rpmisms
Not sure why anyone is surprised anymore by Tesla releasing unfinished
features and then polishing. That's literally what they do.

~~~
capkutay
We're the 'training data'

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dang
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21141149](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21141149)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21105388](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21105388)

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mikelyons
I could be wrong about this but it seems the way autonomous driving works is
that it needs a ton of real-world failures to learn from. There seems to a
mostly-lay-person that there is no way around getting it out there and having
people test it out in very odd parking lots with lots of babies toddling
around it.

This is the process of evolution, can it be artificially simulated in a way
that makes this unnecessary? Can we evolve without people dying or having sex?

~~~
kec
Do it in a controlled environment or simulation, there's no reason or excuse
to risk real world babies.

~~~
mikelyons
But then how do you train it for real world situations where there's real
world babies running around?

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neonate
[https://outline.com/V89rFR](https://outline.com/V89rFR)

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rainyMammoth
It's sad. They will force regulators to act and it will affect legitimate
companies working on Self-Driving. It seems most of other companies working on
self-driving understand there is a lot of responsibility in pushing half-baked
product on the street.

This is why we cannot have nice things.

~~~
mrtksn
Do you remember the time when Uber run over a pedestrian?

It’s pretty reasonable to regulate 2 metric tons steel bodies moving among
fragile creatures.

Beta tests where bugs mean dead people aren’t cool.

~~~
rainyMammoth
I would definitely not put Uber in the list of responsible ones. As far as I
know Waymo and Cruise for example are taking security extremely seriously.

