
Is Tesla telling us the truth over autopilot spat? - alan_cx
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/09/19/tesla_autopilot_spat/
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RickS
At the risk of fulfilling the "HN loves tesla" stereotype, I find it really
difficult to take seriously an article that begins with a photo that was very
clearly chosen to be unflattering, captioned "Overlord".

That kind of flagrant skew poisons the credibility of everything else around
it.

~~~
terravion
Also, what about more balanced and critical coverage of Mobile Eye and their
previously fawning statements of how they loved working with such an
aggressive customer like Tesla ...it somewhat undermines their position.

~~~
bsaul
I haven't seen this statement, but i think everyone here would agree that it
was a surprise to see tesla advertize autopilot, full hands off driving, while
every other technology maker in the world were telling about technology not
beeing fully mature yet.

I've seen a technology talk from mobile eye founder, and those guys look quite
serious and down to earth. Very far from telsa's taste for shine and fame.

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jobu
_" It has long been Mobileye's position that Tesla's Autopilot should not be
allowed to operate hands-free without proper and substantial technological
restrictions and limitations," said the company's most recent statement,
adding: "In communications dating back to May 2015 between Mobileye Chairman
and Tesla's CEO, Mobileye expressed safety concerns regarding the use of
Autopilot hands-free."_

That seems a bit damning for Tesla, but it's hard to take very seriously
without examples of the "communications".

~~~
manyxcxi
I'm no Luddite but I basically yelled at my business partner the other day
when he took his hands off the wheel, eyes off the road, and was punching out
an email as if we were on the train.

I've done plenty of computer vision projects and pitched in on some autonomous
driving/flying hobby projects- so I'm definitely willing to accept our robot
driving overlords, but maybe I know just enough about it to know we're not all
the way there yet.

I feel like Tesla is in a bit of a Catch-22 in that to get the system better
you want as many people driving with it and feeding you data. At the same time
people are people and they will get lulled into a complacent state and begin
not paying attention pretty quickly.

That being said, if there was some data that said right now, today, Tesla
autopilot is better than the average (or maybe up to the 75th percentile)
driver, I'd be okay with people just letting it take the wheel and not
screwing things up.

EDIT: Just to be clear, we were in a Tesla w/ autopilot. We weren't just
coasting down the highway at rush hour in a regular car.

~~~
foofoo55
Tesla could gets lots of quality data with the autopilot disengaged and
running in a passive state such that the autopilot's calculations are compared
to the human driver's actions. Any large variances (such as the autopilot
wanting to suddenly veer left when the driver didn't) would be very valuable.
I've done this with experimental machine control algorithms a number of times.

~~~
majewsky
What makes you think they're not doing it?

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Tempest1981
Might Mobileye be reacting to advice from their lawyers?

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tbabb
I do my best to mentally invert the Tesla/Musk hype, and my own affinity for
what they do, but:

1) It doesn't seem like Tesla was dishonest about anything.

2) MobilEye seems to be very whiny/wimpy about getting a tiny, indirect
fraction of the flak that Tesla has gotten for the crash.

Seems like
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines)
applies.

~~~
neximo64
What about the NY reporter who reviewed a Tesla, and when top gear reviews
one? Was Tesla's response to each of those - were those dishonest?

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zeroecco
ugh, more ME noise. so ME has a lot of evidence that they are lying through
their teeth, if they were so worried why let all the other brands do the hands
free thing? [http://www.caranddriver.com/features/semi-autonomous-cars-
co...](http://www.caranddriver.com/features/semi-autonomous-cars-compared-
tesla-vs-bmw-mercedes-and-infiniti-feature)

* ME boasting about their tech making hands free possible [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCMXXXmxG-I&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCMXXXmxG-I&feature=youtu.be&t=32m19s)

