
All Tesla Cars Being Produced Now Have Full Self-Driving Hardware - impish19
https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-tesla-cars-being-produced-now-have-full-self-driving-hardware
======
hipshaker
Isn't this hackernews??

So many "but what if this and that and this..." & "and yeah let's see if it
can handle X & Y"

This is the iPhone 1 of self-driving cars! That's akin to saying Apple should
have waited to release their phone until iPhone 7 "because of this & that &
this..."

Don't we have to start _somewhere_?? Aren't there supposed to be a big user
base here who understands that it's an evolutionary process - we build the
plane before we build the rocket before we shoot people into space?

 _Oviously_ the perfect self-driving car is still some way off, but I for one
am thrilled this race is on!

~~~
aerovistae
I laughed out loud when I googled "tsla" after watching the video and the top
headline in the news section of the google results was "Analyst doubts the new
move by Tesla Motors."

Clicking on the article for humor's value, I continued to read:

> However, Edmunds.com, Inc. analyst Jessica Caldwell questions the value of
> purchasing a self-driving car before regulations catch up. Caldwell said
> that, meanwhile, competitors could introduce better solutions, potentially
> making Tesla’s hardware “obsolete almost as soon as it’s activated for prime
> time.”

It's just hilarious the contortions of logic people will go to in order to put
Musk down.

Having the equipment ready and in action first is somehow a _disadvantage_ by
this argument, and now you're better off being _later_ to market.

These same people have written that Tesla will be left in the dust as its
competitors beat it to the market because it can't keep up with their
manufacturing, and thus being first to market is only an advantage if you're
not Tesla.

You can't win.

~~~
woodpanel
> It's just hilarious the contortions of logic people will go to in order to
> put Musk down.

As much as I anticipate more cool stuff from Tesla, one could say the same
about akin-ness of people to find everything that Tesla does "super
innovative" and "revolutionary" while the same features already existed in
other cars for quite some time.

I actually laughed out loud when I saw the Headline of this submission "Tesla
released a video of a car driving itself" being the number one entry on HN -
sorry but this speaks volumes about the "neutrality" of HN regarding Tesla.

~~~
ddon
Could you provide couple links to videos of other cars driving like this and
looking for parking without the owner :)

~~~
sah2ed
There's a video [1] by Mercedes from 3 years ago but they didn't demo
autonomous parking like Tesla.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AihC5flC-38](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AihC5flC-38)

~~~
dougmany
Well those roundabouts do give them an unfair advantage. All joking aside,
that video was of a research vehicle. The article above is for a car you can
buy right now.

~~~
ufmace
Well, you can buy the car with the hardware, but the self-driving part is
still a ways out as far as public availability.

~~~
lazaroclapp
Wonder how long it will take for someone to jail break that hardware and hack
up some v0.0.1alpha open source self-driving software for it. Not saying it
would be wise, but it seems like the kind of thing people traditionally do for
"locked up hardware, with software-enable coming in the future" (see gaming
consoles, routers, etc).

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
>> jail break that hardware and hack up some v0.0.1alpha open source self-
driving software for it.

That "someone" would have to be a world leading AI research team, to "hack"
something that would be a few decades ahead of the current state of the art.
But alright.

~~~
lazaroclapp
Not really. The state of the art will get you a self driving car, just not a
very safe one. Think more 1995 CMU Navlab and less anything that would ever be
approved or marketed to the public. Self-driving car technology is 20 years
old. Self-driving car technology I would be willing to trust my life to is...
well -2 to -5 years old at best.

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
>> Not really. The state of the art will get you a self driving car, just not
a very safe one.

Well, you can get a "not very safe" self-driving car by tying a brick to the
gas pedal. It'll sure "drive" itself (in a mostly straight line).

~~~
lazaroclapp
Sure. But that's not the kind of thing a IoT hacker would consider a success.
Someone might be content, however, with making a mod for Tesla that can e.g.
follow "complex" paths of bright orange cones in a parking lot. Test it there,
without being in the car themselves and put it on GitHub for bragging rights
of having made a cool AI+Systems project. The problem is then someone might
see that "cool hack", think it is more than it really is, and kill themselves
turning it on while on the highway...

------
luma
I think what people are missing here is an understanding of how these systems
are tested and deployed at scale. While I have no involvement with Tesla I do
have first-hand knowledge of similar programs at tier 1 automotive suppliers.

The suppliers provide (or are looking to provide) an electronics suite to car
manufacturers. The car manufacturers want the system to be safe lest they be
sued out of existence. One part of that will include contractual requirements
for the system to have clocked n-kilometers on the highway in full (or
partial) operation. For example, one project had a requirement for car(s) with
full sensor data recording and partial automation enabled for 1 million kms.

The automotive suppliers will outfit a handful of, say 2019 model year test
cars with the proposed sensors in the correct place and drive them around
roads and highways in the specified conditions. Outfitting the cars can be
expensive with prototype hardware, collecting the resulting data is a pain,
and as a result the suppliers I'm familiar with run a (relatively) small
number of cars for a lot of miles to record all that data.

The point of all this is to collect sensor data for resimulation as models are
developed and trained. If an exceptional event occurs, they can modify the
driving model, then "replay" the new model against all prior collected data to
make sure the change doesn't do something unexpected elsewhere.

This process takes a lot of time (years) to pursue in this manner. What Tesla
is doing is deploying the hardware in the field, then using the deployed
systems to collect data to be used for the development of the automation
platform. Instead of a couple of test mules they can use every single car they
sell and let you drive it around for them while they record the results. Data
collection that would take years can happen in weeks. This is a brilliant
shortcut to the process and it puts them a couple years in front of the
competition.

~~~
Animats
Of course, Tesla acts like it owns that data. Their privacy policy permits
them to monitor your vehicle unless you opt out. But there's no reason you
can't download that data yourself, if you can figure out how to do so.

Does anybody make an antenna-level middle box for GSM phones? Something you
hook into the antenna cable as a firewall/monitor?

~~~
scandox
Does this mean that Tesla owners could band together and sell all this
massively valuable data to Google?

~~~
worldsayshi
At the very best it will only put Google on par with Tesla in terms of
collected data. Given that it will require Google to reverse-engineer how
Tesla process their data it seems like it would still require quite a large
investment on their part.

------
Animats
More cameras. Better sonars (very short range). Better radar processing, but
apparently the same old single radar at bumper height. Still no windshield-
height radar. No radar scanning in elevation. No LIDAR.

That's a better, but still weak sensor suite. It's probably enough for freeway
driving under good conditions. It's far below Google's sensor suite. Or
Volvo's.

Now they just have to write software smart enough to not plow into stationary
vehicles on the shoulder. There are videos of three separate Tesla crashes
where the Tesla plowed into a vehicle partially blocking a lane.

There have been several announcements of low-cost solid-state LIDAR units for
automotive. Quantergy announced last year, but didn't ship.[1] Innoviz
announced this year to ship in 2018.[2] Advanced Scientific Concepts can't get
their costs down.[3] (They have a great unit that costs $100K; the Dragon
spacecraft uses it during docking.) Those are all-solid-state devices. There
are also some companies trying to use MEMS mirrors, like TV projectors.
Eventually somebody will get 3D LIDAR technology working at a low price point,
but it hasn't happened yet.

[1] [http://www.quanergy.com/products/](http://www.quanergy.com/products/) [2]
[http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-
think/transportation/sens...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-
think/transportation/sensors/israeli-stealth-startup-innoviz-
promises-100-solidstate-automotive-lidar-by-2018) [3]
[http://www.advancedscientificconcepts.com/applications/autom...](http://www.advancedscientificconcepts.com/applications/automotive.htm)

~~~
frik
It's staggering that Tesla don't use LIDAR at all.

Sure LIDAR is more expensive but the data quality is very stable and good.
Cameras won't work that well or at all in night or when the sun rays blend in
morning / evening or in bad weather conditions like heavy rain or snow. All
other self-driving cars I know of have at least a small LIDAR beside several
other types of sensors.

~~~
ilaksh
Besides being almost as expensive as the car they mount on top and stick out
like a sore thumb. This is the reason. It doesn't look cool. Amazed that
people don't realize that.

~~~
rplnt
In that sense, aerodynamics might play a role as well.

------
thesimon
If you go to the order page of the Model S, it says for the "Full Self-Driving
Hardware":

>Please note also that using a self-driving Tesla for car sharing and ride
hailing for friends and family is fine, but doing so for revenue purposes will
only be permissible on the Tesla Network, details of which will be released
next year.

Interesting decision.

~~~
Klathmon
That's a really fucking shitty thing to do, and is gonna cause some pretty big
waves IMO if they follow through with it.

The issues with not being able to modify your own stuff is already really
shitty, but its not something that the average Joe really can understand
easily, and even less care about it.

But not being able to USE your car for some things? That just screams easy
headlines and it's a reason I might not get a Tesla in the future.

~~~
djsumdog
The most interesting thing about self-driving vehicles is that there is a
legitimate reason people should never be able to modify the firmware on their
vehicles. The risks would be very high.

There is also the entire liability and planed obsolescent issues not being
dealt with. Will Tesla support these cars forever? Will 10 year old models
still get software updates?

~~~
sangnoir
> The most interesting thing about self-driving vehicles is that there is a
> legitimate reason people should never be able to modify the firmware on
> their vehicles

People can _already_ modify their car hardware in dangerous ways, yet no one
is welding the hood shut. You may weld spikes on your car to keep prying eyes
away if you wish, but when you inevitably impale someone, Ford will not be
liable.

Why should software be treated differently? All Tesla has to do to avoid
liability is to say "The vehicle was running firmware with aftermarket
firmware installed by the owner". They won't even need to run diagnostics,
they can simply look at the logs they collect.

~~~
sinxoveretothex
> You may weld spikes on your car to keep prying eyes away if you wish, but
> when you inevitably impale someone, Ford will not be liable.

Because it will be obvious that it was modified, even to journalists, the
public and a jury of your peers. Also the cops, who will arrest you for it.

But there is no such visibility for software.

~~~
sangnoir
Expert witnesses exist for a reason - they will be able to answer the question
whether the firmware was factory-installed or not.

> But there is no such visibility for software

Software modification has a lot of visibility, especially since Teslas log
everything - why not log when new firmware was loaded? They could also
checksum post-facto, but even that is not necessary: Tesla could implement
something similar to Androids "fastboot oem unlock" option

~~~
sinxoveretothex
> Software modification has a lot of visibility, especially since Teslas log
> everything

What I mean by visibility is that you can't fudge it, that reality is plainly
visible to all actors.

Income is not visible directly (although what one's house looks like for
example is visible and is a good indication of income). If you meet a well-
dressed guy in a Starbucks, you have no idea whether he's crippled with debt
or whether he has so much money he doesn't know what to do with. And that's
true regardless of the fact that income is regulated by the government, that
banks keep records and all that.

Software is NOT visible in that sense: whether your microwave is running code
that will make it explode when you type in 9999 or not, is not something that
can be known by everyone but the first person who has access to the device,
let alone the public who couldn't understand how to compare two hashes anyway.

As far as any third party is concerned, Tesla could just be faking logs and no
one would know. Actually, you may not see it still, so imagine that say, GM,
suddenly releases an autonomous car and it crashes. Do you trust them when
they tell you that the logs say the driver was at fault?

------
simonsarris
How interesting. So up-coming Tesla drivers temporarily won't get fancy
features.

For a time, new Tesla buyers again become early adopters. But unlike
traditional early adopters, who take a trade-off (on price, or features, or
polish) for being first, these adopters are promised the features when they
are ready.

The nay-saying around Tesla is immense, even in these early HN comments.
Obviously there's some risk here, but man. Tesla is sowing the seeds of the
future.

~~~
CamperBob2
I think it's great that they're taking the big risks needed to move the
industry forward, and not letting the lawyers run the company.

But some of the risks they're taking are just completely stupid and
unnecessary, such as calling their assisted cruise control "Autopilot." That's
like waving the proverbial cape at the proverbial bull.

~~~
PacketPaul
Pilot here. Airplanes have autopilot. While on autopilot you are still
expected to be monitoring the flight and take control at a moments notice.
Autopilot does not allow the pilot to take a nap or go in the back and party
with the flight attendants.

Autopilot is the correct term. I'm tired of always having to cater to the
lowest common denominator.

~~~
kpao
Pilot here as well, unfortunately, it's a fight that won't be easy to win. If
in the mind of people, Autopilot means self driving. It's going to be hard to
change the global perception.

When I'm using the Autopilot, I feel like I'm in my airplane, always on guard,
and in a practice of recovery from unusual attitude in flight.

There are a few times also where being an engineer has helped a lot. You can
pretty much predict the situations where the car will run into issues and
conflicts ahead of time, just by looking at the scenario in front of you.

It's something that the majority of population is not trained to do.

Now having said that, I used to own a BMW X5 with Adaptive Cruise Control, and
that car was also doing some pretty stupid things at times, especially when
cars in front were moving out of the way. The car would suddenly think the way
was clear and floor the accelerator...

~~~
nojvek
Have a RAV4 2016 SE. Great car, sonars and cameras everywhere but still very
stupid driving at times. I don't mind it, because it keeps me alert to take
over at moments notice.

I really want to hack the can bus and give it more smarts. What is the
legality of that?

~~~
lawpoop
So what is the benefit of this sort of autopilot? It sounds like it's driving
except without going through the motions.

~~~
sjwright
You are freed from continually making stupid rote inputs to match the speed of
the driver in front, allowing you to apportion a bit more focus to the road
further ahead.

Further, it makes the bulk of motorway driving less fatiguing. When you're not
having to personally intervene to slow down when the driver in front chooses
to go a few kays slower than you, it's nowhere near as irritating.

------
scraft
Interesting for two reasons:

1\. It is a self driving car, it is so clearly the future, I wish it existed
now, it is going to be awesome (in my opinion).

2\. Despite knowing about and following news about driverless cars for a
while, there was something surprisingly (to me) compelling about watching the
video. It's like you get a little taste of the full A to B that it can give
you (door to door).

Who wants to speculate how long it will be until self-driving cars are common
place in the UK? I need to know how long I have to save..!

~~~
rsync
"It is a self driving car, it is so clearly the future, I wish it existed now,
it is going to be awesome (in my opinion)."

Even now, several years into the current news/development arc of self-driving
cars, I still can't believe this is going to be the future.

We're really never going to european (or japanese) style train networks ?
We're really going to keep binging on roads ? We, as a nation of _fat slobs_
[1] are really not ever going to return to a culture of walking ?

I always thought of car culture (and we absolutely live in a car culture) as
some kind of 20th century aberration ... eventually, LA would get their
streetcars and subways[2] back ... eventually Minneapolis and Denver would
have 20, not 2 light rail lines ... eventually we'd graduate from shitty bus
networks operated badly, for poor people.

Tesla cars are awesome. Successful self driving car software would be an
incredible achievement. I worry that there is an arc of societal and urban
development that has gone very badly awry and that this will further keep us
from fixing it.

[1] That is not hyperbole.

[2] Yes, I know there is currently a tiny, minor subway in LA.

~~~
noveltyaccount
I think the future is self-driving public transit. I imagine minivans that
perform dynamic route optimization. Instead of a bus that stops every block on
a pre-determined route, use an app to input your pickup location and
destination and the self-driving van picks you and a few people up from a
small radius, and drops people off in a small radius. This will be faster and
cheaper than both public transit and even driving yourself (no hunting for
parking).

~~~
majani
Unfortunately, public transit is way less profitable than selling cars to
people, so self driving public transit doesn't seem like the top priority,
despite having the best net benefit for society

~~~
noveltyaccount
Good point. I have always imagined this to be government subsidized just like
public transit is today. I live in Seattle where we're spending billions
laying light rail, and I have to wonder if it's all for naught, if self-
driving public transit will make rail obsolete.

------
11thEarlOfMar
> Teslas with new hardware will temporarily lack certain features currently
> available on Teslas with first-generation Autopilot hardware, including some
> standard safety features such as automatic emergency breaking, collision
> warning, lane holding and active cruise control.

Not sure what to make of this. New buyers are getting less than current owners
now, but expected to get much more later?

I can't think of a precedent for this as a marketing approach in modern
consumer products.

~~~
rasz_pl
Its not marketing decision, MobilEye dropped them, this is Teslas emergency
plan.

~~~
grecy
> _MobilEye dropped them_

Do you know if MobileEye dropped them, or they chose to go with something
else? How do you know?

~~~
Matthias247
There were lots of articles and press releases around that on the web and
linked here, just search for MobilEye and Tesla.

E.g. the one here: [http://arstechnica.com/cars/2016/09/tesla-dropped-by-
mobiley...](http://arstechnica.com/cars/2016/09/tesla-dropped-by-mobileye-for-
pushing-the-envelope-in-terms-of-safety/)

------
spIrr
From 00:50 to 01:10, why is the car driving in the left lane, when the right
lane is clearly not turning? It's strange to see this behaviour as someone
living in Germany, where you are supposed to, by default, drive in the right
lane if you are not overtaking another car or there is a traffic jam...

EDIT: also, did it turn into the wrong lane at 2:25-2:30? is this a security
risk?

~~~
LeifCarrotson
At 0:47, there is a car in the right lane, so it makes the right turn and
immediately merges into the left lane.

Yes, you're supposed to drive in the right lane when not passing - some
localities are more strict about this than others. For example, here in
Michigan, there's a fine for driving in the left lane and not passing anyone
for...one mile? Two miles? I forget, it's never really used. And you're
supposed to "FALL" into the First Available Legal Lane. But in practice, if
the second lane is open, people will jump across the first lane for the second
- just watch your rearview as you accelerate and make sure the oncoming car
wasn't moving over for you.

This is more aggressive driving than I would have expected from an automatic
algorithm, but perfectly matches my expectations for the driver of a luxury
sport car like a BMW, Audi, or Mercedes - and probably a Tesla, or a compact
car driven by a young driver. I would expect a minivan, hybrid, or small
commercial vehicle to wait. And I would expect a bus, garbage truck, or semi
truck to just pull out and force the oncoming car to merge into the left lane.

Also, it would be a safety risk, not a security risk.

~~~
greensoap
I will reply because I actually know that road. That is Sand Hill Road going
toward the I280 onramps. The car stops at the top of the hill where the
Rosewood Hotel is. On the otherside of the hill, the right line is only for
traffic taking the I280 northbound onramp.

Also, the left lane is only for passing rule doesn't apply like that in
California. Instead the rule is that you cannot be going slower than the
traffic behind you or the traffic to your right. If you are, you have to move
over. But if you are going faster than the traffic around you (or nobody else
is around you) you can stay in the left lane as long as you like.

------
bflesch
Truly impressive. I wonder if the Model 3 will also be fitted out with all the
sensors and cameras. If yes, I'll definitely get one.

As a German citizen, it really bugs me that Volkswagen is incapable of this
kind of innovation. I don't see their roadmap play out like they plan it,
because Tesla might beat them to market hard. I fear German regulation will
jump in (again) to help them against Tesla.

Currently, the German government gives out electric vehicle subsidies (~5k per
car), but it is limited cars less expensive than 60k. At the moment there is
very low demand for this subsidy, because everyone who goes EV wants to go
Tesla.

~~~
joaonunesk
The problem is that most of the established car companies are not thinking in
the future. They become accommodate with the amount of cash they have on the
hand, and they do not pursue innovation.

Currently, Tesla is the only one who is delivering practical innovation and
success!

~~~
icebraining
Car companies have been developing this technology for longer than Tesla has
even existed.

Here's Mercedes in 2014:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_RFzC_G5BA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_RFzC_G5BA)

~~~
calvinbhai
True. But they add the hardware only if you pay for it up front.

Tesla has the hardware in every car it sells, and will be mining super useful
data with all these sensors, and tweaking it's software (machine learning
based on real use cases for a year) before it puts it out to the public! The
scale of data mining that can be done with Tesla's approach is near impossible
with other cars (if they continue to sell the cars with and without the
sensory hardware)

~~~
forgetsusername
How hard do you think adding sensors to vehicles is to accomplish if the big
players decide it's valuable? This is commodity hardware. And if/when they do,
they will be gathering _far more_ data that Tesla, by virtue of the massive
number of vehicles on the road.

Again, Tesla may very well do it better than anyone else, but it's a bit early
to talk like they've won anything here.

------
jsherwani
The video is incredible: [https://www.tesla.com/videos/full-self-driving-
hardware-all-...](https://www.tesla.com/videos/full-self-driving-hardware-all-
teslas)

~~~
rejschaap
It's pretty cool. From a marketing perspective I think they shouldn't have
sped up the video. I feel it makes the driving look a little dangerous.

~~~
_nalply
I liked the sportiness of it.

------
hacker_9
> "The person in the driver seat is only there for legal reasons"

> Person gets out and let's car park itself

But seriously the tech is very impressive. The journey was rather simple
though, and didn't cover more difficult areas (inner city driving, heavy stop
start traffic, roadblocks, road accidents and so on). I hope that Tesla test
these things thoroughly because they've already got one death under their
belt, it won't take many more to put people off completely.

~~~
marricks
I don't think it's really fair to put it as dire as that, humans have more
deaths, with similar miles, under their belts.

Many people are starting to realize that's the real test, especially those
likely to be model S/≡/X customers.

Real consumer and public education on the nature of the problem is necessary
though, especially if we want a safer self driving world.

~~~
frgtpsswrdlame
That's not really true though is it? The human miles take into account all
sorts of driving conditions, while self-driving car miles are only from the
safest and easiest driving conditions. Doesn't seem apples to apples to me.

~~~
makomk
Even if we ignore the apples and oranges comparison, it's still not true; I
think someone calculated it'd require almost 300 million miles of autonomous
driving without deaths to know the death rate was actually lower, and Tesla's
first death happened rather sooner than that.

------
mparlane
How sure are they that this hardware revision is going to be what is required?
I feel like at any point in time you can make an assumption about the hardware
requirements to only discover in future that you could have actually done it
with just a software update if the CPU had one more core. They'd have to be
pretty sure this HW rev would meet their future demands for self-driving right
?

~~~
victorhooi
I assume they're reasonably confident, since they've been doing this for a
while, and have ploughed more money/time into this than most others.

That, and judging by Tesla's history - if there was indeed something lacking,
they might just retro-fit it for free onto people's cars. So I assume they're
keen on getting this right...haha.

------
KKKKkkkk1
The former head of Google's self-driving car project has said that self-
driving cars are decades into the future.* Even if that's too pessimistic,
nobody today knows what a self-driving car will look like, what kind of
algorithms it will run, and what kind of sensors it will need to get there.
I'm afraid this pronouncement is another sign that Mr. Musk is taking his
investors for a ride.

* [http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/self...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/self-driving/google-selfdriving-car-will-be-ready-soon-for-some-in-decades-for-others)

~~~
davidz
"How quickly can we get this into people's hands? If you read the papers, you
see maybe it's three years, maybe it's thirty years. And I am here to tell you
that honestly, it's a bit of both."

This statement is based on what he is aware of at the time. The most
pessimistic side of it is purely a data game, and Tesla's ability to have 100k
cars collecting data for them will give them a significant advantage to
accelerate their progress.

------
Walkman
So you buy a "regular" car today which will be automagically converted to a
self driving car when all the regulations and software catch up. That's pretty
cool. You can buy into the future today :D

------
EA
Police departments around the country are going to see a loss of revenue. No
more rolling through stop signs, illegal lane changes, or speeding tickets.

~~~
YCode
I suspect they'll adapt to pull people over for things like sleeping in the
driver seat, "embracing another while driving" and such.

They could also shift to giving out more domestic or pedestrian tickets for
things like music being too loud and jay-walking.

------
dyarosla
From the car purchase page, it seems that they are charging an additional
$13,200 (combining the addons Enhanced Autopilot and Full Self Driving
capability at $7,900 and $5,300 respectively) for the full experience:

[https://www.tesla.com/en_CA/models/design](https://www.tesla.com/en_CA/models/design)

~~~
brianwawok
Software switch fee. You get the same hardware, different feature flag. Crazy
right?

~~~
imtringued
How is that different from buying software for a computer? I can install a
linux distribution or buy windows. It's the same hardware, different "feature
flag". Somehow that's not crazy.

~~~
brianwawok
This is more like your computer coming with 2 hard drives.. One active with
your OS, one empty. You can at any time pay $100 and start using the other
drive. Otherwise it sits empty.

We are talking about giving people hardware for free, then paying money to
turn it on or not.

------
ahunt09
The video was too edited for me to have confidence. There was a moment at
about 2:05 where I was interested to see how it handled the termination and
merging of the lane -- but then we cut away before that happened. Or at 1:30
when there's no big sign post in the median, and then switching to left-rear
camera, there we pass one. It's a nice narrative on the future, but it's far
from proof of comprehensive functionality.

------
S_A_P
So what do these cars do when the hit a puddle of mud and it covers all the
cameras. Will there be a new form of vandalism where someone puts scotch tape
over/destroys the vehicles cameras and now your fancy autonomous vehicle is
rendered incapacitated. Maybe this seems unlikely or ridiculous, but the
dependence on cameras at points on the car that seem likely to get dirty and
or damaged seems to be a risk to me.

~~~
esquevin
What'd you do if you drove over mud and it covered your windshield ?

~~~
S_A_P
turn on the windshield wipers. Last I checked there were no water jets, wipers
or other cleaning devices for the camera lenses on any Tesla. Again, maybe it
seems like a small thing, but its still something you would have to worry
about. Imagine driving down a dirt road and your autonomous car becomes
disabled until you get out and clean the cameras.

~~~
Jiig
Maybe this would be a problem sometime in the future when autonomous cars
don't have manual controls anymore, but if the cameras were disabled for some
reason you can just take control and drive off the dirt road your self, and
head to a car wash.

I don't see this really being a problem that has to be worried about.

------
mentos
I had hoped to see this technology occur in my lifetime, I said to myself "I
hope I live to see the day" a few years ago. Here it is in 2016, obviously its
just a highly controlled demo but it has connected the dots. I'm confident the
technology is there and the hardest work will be overcoming legislation and
politics.

But does anyone else find this bittersweet?

I had an awesome moment of pride for what Tesla and Elon have done here. The
dream is now reality.

Followed by a moment of sadness. The dream is now reality..

~~~
tim333
The legislation and politics bit has been surprisingly easy going and if
anything seems to be leaning to forcing safety systems onto people rather than
banning them. The bigger problem still seems to be making the systems work
reliably.

------
bitL
All German car manufacturers are now fitting their cars with hidden passive
sensors for collecting data related to human driving with the intent to use
these data for autonomous driving. Their main problem is the cost of
transmission, i.e. they are considering buying mobile networks/towers and
piggyback on mobile traffic. Then obviously feeding these data to huge
datacenters with the projected flow of up to 2MB/s from a single car.

------
mklarmann
It was already announced before, that the hardware is included. And it was
clear, that it is meant to be used for autonomous driving. And as they do not
have autonomous driving yet, this is indeed just hot air... How would they
know it is completed if there is no demonstration of it actually working?

~~~
wmf
Looking at what is not said, my interpretation is that previous Teslas will
_not_ be software-upgraded to full autonomy because the problem is harder than
they previously thought.

~~~
raisedbyninjas
Their LIDAR provider pulled out and now they're switching to camera-based CV
and ending development of the LIDAR branch. I think they're hoping that this
approach matures enough to match the capability of LIDAR in time for them to
meet their market goals.

~~~
chc
Either you're confused or I'm confused as to what you're talking about. Tesla
has never used LIDAR and they actually leaned more heavily on CV until
recently when they started using radar more extensively.

------
stefanv
I wonder who decided/approved the use of a song about death and funeral
procession (Paint it Black by The Rolling Stones) in a video about "driving"
without hands on public roads...

~~~
castratikron
Isn't this the death of driving as we know it?

------
amluto
> To make sense of all of this data, a new onboard computer with more than 40
> times the computing power of the previous generation runs the new Tesla-
> developed neural net for vision, sonar and radar processing software.

40 times the performance of a Tegra 3 is not particularly impressive.

Also, I sincerely hope that this new faster computer doesn't also run a web
browser.

~~~
taneq
A separation between the running gear of the car, and its entertainment center
/ user interface, is absolutely vital if we don't want to see an endless
stream of "hackers offed Public Figure X by driving their car into a bridge"
in the news.

It boggles me that anyone even considers running things like antilock brakes,
car security, and especially self-driving capability from an internet-
connected device, no matter how nice and convenient it may be.

~~~
anchpop
It needs to be connected to the Internet at some point to download updates.
What could happen is having a second computer that all the controls are routed
through, and that one does some sanity checks before executing the self
driver's actions

------
jsingleton
Direct link:
[https://player.vimeo.com/video/188105076](https://player.vimeo.com/video/188105076)

This is also the video embedded in the main press release (discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12748863](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12748863))
and this news article:
[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/20/tesla-
rel...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/20/tesla-releases-
video-of-fully-autonomous-model-x-electric-car)

------
studentrob
Is this video sped up to make it seem like the car is more capable?

It seems jumpy, and, for the speed at which the car is going and comes to a
stop, there is not as much lurching as I would expect.

~~~
gagege
I think it's sped up because driving is boring to watch.

~~~
hyperbovine
Hence, the self-driving car.

------
marricks
Quite interesting that while this is happening,

> Tesla's with new hardware will temporarily lack certain features currently
> available on Teslas with first-generation Autopilot hardware

Which makes sense, as they'll be pulling in all that new data from the
sensors. I guess people won't be too disappointed owning a car that will
eventually be able to be fully autonomous!

~~~
makomk
"including some standard safety features such as automatic emergency braking,
collision warning, lane holding and active cruise control". They're shipping
without features that are commonplace, probably even expected, on premium cars
these days.

------
JonoBB
At just after 3.23, when the car is parking, it looks like that rear wheel is
going to hit the curb, and then it suddenly cuts away to the next scene.

Maybe there was enough turning angle to miss it, but I dunno...it looked
pretty close to me.

~~~
martin_bech
Autopark works pretty flawlessly. I use it s couple of times pr week in my
current gen Tesla. (Now old gen)

------
bnycum
I was thinking of this idea the other day when I came to an intersection where
a stop sign had been hit. It was now bent in a way that faced the highway that
did not have to stop. I was on a highway with no stop signs or lights for
miles. What would the self driving car do in that situation? For both sides of
the intersection.

Then I thought about another intersection by my old house. For years the cross
street had to stop for traffic on the main street. One day I went to work,
then I came home and it was all the sudden a 4-way stop. No database of stop
signs could work either unless it was updated to the minute.

~~~
usaphp
> "It was now bent in a way that faced the highway that did not have to stop."

Did you know about it because you saw it being bent or because you drove there
before and knew that there should be a stop sign?

~~~
bnycum
I had driven it many times before. To a human the whole situation would seem
pretty close to obvious as to who should and shouldn't stop.

------
NegatioN
So, both Nvidia and Tesla are working on self-driving cars based on the
sensory data mainly from cameras mounted on the car, which are then run
through X number of RNNs to generate models to operate on? While Google
pursues their LIDAR-approach?

What other players are operating in this space? And what's their approach?

~~~
ape4
The LIDAR idea seems better to me. The car can build an accurate 3D model. I'm
sure the artificial vision of the Tesla is good but it will probably get
fooled too.

~~~
moogly
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that LIDAR-only
doesn't work at all during heavy rain or snow. You'll probably always need
some sensor fusion from a mix of optical/supersonic/radar/lidar.

~~~
ape4
Make sense to me. I wonder if a camera would be fooled by a Bugs Bunny-like
tunnel painted on a wall.

------
pyb
No bad, but it still needs to be taught to keep to the right. Unless this is
how people normally drive in the US ?

~~~
Robin_Message
In the US you stay in lane. Many other countries ban undertaking, but not the
US:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overtaking#Legal_status_by_cou...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overtaking#Legal_status_by_country)

~~~
joelthelion
Having done both, the US system makes so much more sense. Less maneuvering
means fewer potential accidents.

Even if undertaking is banned, you still need to check when switching lanes
since people will undertake you no matter what. So there is no clear benefit.

~~~
perakojotgenije
Why you shouldn’t drive slowly in the left lane

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oqfodY2Lz0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oqfodY2Lz0)

------
Element_
Will this new neural net and hardware be capable of advanced object detection?

For instance if a plastic bag or piece of cardboard rolls across the highway a
human driver knows it's safe to run over without stopping. Would a system like
this just see an obstacle via radar and emergency brake?

Google has been working on this problem for longer and they have access to the
largest image/video datasets in the world to train their models. I wonder how
google and tesla systems would compare.

~~~
dangrossman
> Google has been working on this problem for longer and they have access to
> the largest image/video datasets in the world to train their models

As of August, Google's self-driving cars have 2 million miles of real on-road
experience, while Tesla's Autopilot systems have 140 million. They're beaming
back data to Tesla the whole time.

~~~
Element_
My understanding is because Tesla has to send their data over the cell network
it is first heavily processed/reduced by the cars onboard computer before
being sent back (in order to conserve bandwidth). So I am not sure if it's
fair to compare the 2 company's datasets based on miles driven alone.

~~~
rak00n
I thought Tesla cars get connected to home WiFi as you park.

------
Darthy
To be safely aware of its surroundings, an autonomous vehicle must have two
types of sensors in each direction - this setup is not safe enough.

I would also have proof of 10 million kilometers of simulated rides with no
accident, and a third party organization not under the control of Tesla who
creates some really tough repeatable challenges, both simulated and in the
real world, that a vehicle manufacturer has to pass.

Challenges should include:

\- thin wire tensioned over the street.

\- the combination of super heavy rain with lighting, thick fog and people
suddenly running onto the street

\- passing by a soccer field and ball bounces over the street. Car should stop
because it can be reasonably expected that a child will run blindly onto the
street after the ball

\- have obstacles that minimally invade into the minimum clearance outline of
the current planned course. Car should plot an alternative course if it is
possible or stop. Obstacles should appear in the last moment possible and car
should always do the right thing.

\- proof that the car can always detect street boundaries, any obstacle, and
especially humans. It should be 100% correct or side on the safe side every
time. At night, in a rain storm with super thick smog and hail. I'm not
joking.

These are the minimum limits before any self-driving car should be able to
drive on public roads, imho.

------
mkagenius
Amazing.

It does give a feel of bus/train when the owner gets off and the car heads to
its next job.

I wonder if you need to _buy_ cars when complete autonomous cars start to
roll.

~~~
AndrewDucker
Self-driving taxis are the future. Far less waste when the vehicle isn't lying
around all day taking up space and doing nothing.

~~~
JshWright
I look forward to having to insert and remove three car seats for every short
trip...

EDIT: By 'car seat' I mean a seat for an infant/toddler/child.

~~~
rwmj
I don't understand. Why would you need to remove the seats?

~~~
blastofpast
My guess is child seats.

~~~
rwmj
Fair enough. It's high time that car manufacturers worked out how to make
seats/seatbelts that are adaptable to all ages. Or perhaps some sort of
foldaway "wings" which turn a standard seat into a child seat.

------
shas3
This is a sign of the utter commodification of hardware and the possibility
that a majority of innovation in the future (with the exception of low-power
wearables) lies in the realm of software and algorithms.

~~~
josephagoss
But things have been moving that way for a long time and until it becomes
common place to travel in spaceships it's going to remain that way.

The real space age will again open up hardware, but make no mistake that
software will play as important or more of an important role then to.

------
dperfect
It is quite impressive, but I'll honestly have a hard time getting excited
about self-driving cars until I see a demo of driving at night in a snow storm
(heck, even heavy rain would be nice to see) around road construction, poor
signage and faint lines on the road. Believe it or not, those kinds of
conditions are fairly common in places outside of California, and until we
have self-driving cars that can do really well in those conditions, this is
basically just a fun demo in my opinion.

I'm really not trying to downplay the hard work and technical merit of Tesla;
sped-up video and opportune edits aside, it is very cool. But I can't help but
feel that it's a bit like showing off (to the world) your shiny new web app
that only works in IE with ActiveX installed, only if your name is "demo
user", and only when the planets are in perfect alignment - or in other words,
a functional prototype by anyone else's standards. It's a great achievement,
but we're certainly not "there" yet - if that's what it's trying to
communicate. And yes, the "Full Self-Driving Hardware" headline certainly
seems to suggest that (at least) the hardware is "there" now, and that it's
only a matter of software iteration to be done.

Before you respond with the typical "but those are just nitpicky details" or
"this is only v1; v2 will be able to solve those things easily", let me say
this: going from this to a system that can handle challenging road conditions
is _not_ just a matter of software iteration. Since poor road conditions
threaten the reliability of sensor data itself, we're talking about a problem
that gets increasingly more difficult. The most sophisticated software in the
world can't do anything if cameras and sensors are frozen or obstructed, and
when signage and lines are lacking, the software must rely on more and more
human-like levels of AI inference - not just about driving, but about the
complex world in general.

~~~
titzer
The video seemed to imply that the hardware is using cameras for navigation.
What if a camera lens is simply dirty? Seems, very, very brittle.

------
jasonallen
When this becomes real, the next question becomes "why own the car"? What's
the benefit of having it sit in a parking lot for 8 hours until I'm ready to
go home. Seems like the future will become more Uber-like, where I call up
rides whenever I want, and don't worry about parking, maintenance, etc....

~~~
toomuchtodo
[https://electrek.co/2016/10/19/teslas-new-self-driving-
car-c...](https://electrek.co/2016/10/19/teslas-new-self-driving-car-can-only-
make-you-money-on-the-ride-sharing-tesla-network-not-uber-or-lyft/)

------
nateberkopec
If I was Tesla, I wouldn't have sped up the video at all. People are going to
think this car drives like a maniac.

------
revelation
_Teslas with new hardware will temporarily lack certain features currently
available on Teslas with first-generation Autopilot hardware, including some
standard safety features such as automatic emergency breaking, collision
warning, lane holding and active cruise control_

Right, so they are actually announcing that their new cars now have less
automation capabilities. I can't keep track with all the "autopilot" hardware
they have deployed to date, MobilEye, BOSCH Radar, own software hacks, then
this completely new one..

Not to mention that they have sold thousands of cars with the same Autopilot
brand and "fully autonomous soon" messaging that will now likely never get
there.

~~~
ec109685
When did they say the first generation cars with autopilot would be "fully
autonomous soon"?

------
ajmurmann
About self driving cars in general: I am very concerned that self driving cars
and speed limits are going to be a very annoying issue. I can see them drive
way slow in semi-complicated situations annoying all other drivers. There are
also many places in the county where it's normal and seemingly expected to go
5-10mp/h over the speed limit. Of course self driving cars will stay under the
posted speed limit. I hope that in the long run we will be able to innovate on
how we deal with speed limits especially once the human driven cars are off
the road and hopefully illegal. But till then I can see lots of road rage
coming from this.

~~~
wcummings
I look forward to riding my bike 10mph in front of driverless cars.

This is one of the few things that _excites_ me about driverless cars. People
_should_ be driving below the limit (and the limits should be about 10mph
lower in a lot of places) for pedestrian safety. The fatality rate drops
precipitously around 20mph.

~~~
netsharc
Instead of mad honking drivers, the car will sniff your smartphone's Bluetooth
address. Computers you go near will recognize the smartphone, know it's you,
and they'll start crashing programs and slowing down the wifi...

------
modeless
So self-driving will be a standard feature of Model 3, not an option? Pretty
cool if they can make it work. I'm skeptical that the computer (NVIDIA Drive
PX 2 perhaps?) will have enough power to do it all without LIDAR.

~~~
tompic823
Self-driving _hardware_ will be standard on Model 3, but you'll likely still
have to pay a premium for the software to activate it. This is akin to Tesla
including the 75 kWh battery on the 60 kWh Model S, and then charging you
extra to "activate" the battery's full capacity.

~~~
anchpop
It's a classic business strategy. It allows them to sell a car for cheaper to
people who can't afford to pay a little extra.

------
grondilu
I think the most impressive part is the end, when the car looks for a parking
spot.

~~~
mattlondon
Also, I thought the self-closing door was a nice touch.

Interesting really - I guess it has a nice "chauffeur" feel if you can get
into the car without closing the door (I wonder how it knows you are there? Or
that everyone who is about to get out has got out?) and/or just roaming off.

Personally I'd be worried about someone slipping into the car before it had
closed the door and stealing anything in the car.

------
cs702
Very impressive...

BUT the car was driving itself in ideal conditions, with high visibility in
all directions and amidst light traffic.

What I'm really hoping to see is a video of the car driving itself _in more
dangerous situations_ , such as in the middle of heavy rain or thick fog that
limits visibility, or at night on a dangerous stretch of highway with lots of
trailer trucks zooming by, or surrounded by tired angry drivers on a major
holiday in a popular route with bumper-to-bumper traffic.

When self-driving cars can successfully navigate those and other similarly
dangerous scenarios, we will know the technology is ready.

~~~
serg_chernata
The new array will be using 8 cameras and 12 ultrasound sensors for precisely
those conditions.

------
pauljurczak
Hardware performance is not a problem for Level 5 autonomy - the software is.
If Tesla insists on deploying full self-driving capability in the next couple
of years, they will be litigated out of existence. We are a few decades away
from autopilot to "understand" what it is doing. Right now it is just
parroting the most common scenarios. This may be as good or slightly better
than the average driver, but it still will result in many deaths, if deployed
in hundreds of thousands of cars. Unless Tesla somehow shields itself from
legal liability, it will be sued to oblivion.

~~~
Tepix
I don't think so. It's not hard to make an algorithm that drives slower/extra
careful when facing unusual circumstances. It's the same thing human drivers
do btw.

~~~
hash-set
No it isn't! I often react to bad situations not by slowing down but by
speeding up, changing lanes, going on to medians--or even grass one time, you
name it. Driving defensively is so much more than not tailgating the car in
front of you.

------
misiti3780
Does anyone know how many people Tesla employs that are dedicated to working
on the self driving software?

------
shawn-butler
So, I am buying hardware I can't use solely for the purpose of providing data
to a for-profit company for free to improve its product for another generation
of customers?

~~~
abestic9
No, you're buying hardware you can use which has the added benefit of
improving the product you're using over time using data collected from your
hardware along with thousands of others'.

------
x2f10
I'm probably too late to ask, but how do self-driving cars handle 4-way stops?
How does it know when it's time to go?

~~~
abrkn
Many times humans are bad at it too, especially when pedestrians are involved.

------
awqrre
Good thing the car didn't take off for a joy ride after dropping off the
customer... might have became a legal issue.

------
RLN
Looks like Tesla self driving cars 'dry steer', something that my driving
instructor always told me not to do.

~~~
StavrosK
What's dry steering?

~~~
ygra
Steering while not moving, I guess. It't not really good for the tyres.
However, for certain maneuvers, e.g. when parking, there isn't really a good
way to avoid it.

------
mrkgnao
> While this is occurring, Teslas with new hardware will temporarily lack
> certain features currently available on Teslas with first-generation
> Autopilot hardware, including some standard safety features such as
> automatic emergency braking, collision warning, lane holding and active
> cruise control.

Um.

------
codeulike
Here's the video of it in action, an autonomous drive to the Tesla factory

[https://www.tesla.com/videos/full-self-driving-hardware-
all-...](https://www.tesla.com/videos/full-self-driving-hardware-all-teslas)

------
sixdimensional
I feel like this video would have been even more awesome if Elon himself had
been the passenger!

~~~
mazesc
How so?

~~~
sixdimensional
I suppose it was to show how much he believes in his own product, if he
demonstrates that he trusts it to drive him around safely. When you see an
"inventor" testing their own product it is usually good press. Given, I
realize he is not the "inventor" per se (more of the "enabler"?), but still it
is a show of good faith in one's own product.

Not because of hero worship.

I can't say I've ever seen a video of Elon riding in a self driving Tesla
before, seems like it would be very tangible proof how much he trusts the
autopilot.

------
JBiserkov
Video is well done, the car seems amazing.

Offtopic: There seems to be a bug, the video being uploaded twice:

[https://www.tesla.com/videos/full-self-driving-hardware-
all-...](https://www.tesla.com/videos/full-self-driving-hardware-all-tesla-
cars)

[https://www.tesla.com/videos/full-self-driving-hardware-
all-...](https://www.tesla.com/videos/full-self-driving-hardware-all-teslas)

The second one redirects to the first. The first contains two links to the
second, below and on the right "Next video". I clicked for quite sometime
until I figured what was happening.

~~~
blastofpast
I take it as a hint that Tesla may be producing more than just "cars" in the
near future.

------
tn_
This is very awesome and just one more step in moving towards a completely
automated world. Everyone's commutes everyday is just a gold-mine of mostly
unused data-points. There are solutions out there right now like Waze / Google
Maps that'll redirect users around accidents. Can you imagine how crazy it'll
be when our roads become even smarter based on individual users. For example,
if there are people who "logged-in" to a road that enjoy driving faster, then
this self-aware driving car can go in the lanes that avoid certain dangerous
users.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
Except with a completely automated society, there won't be any reason to
commute.

------
amenghra
I wonder how they balance their development process for the algorithms with
the upgraded sensors vs the code that runs with older sensors as input. Do
they maintain two different teams? Back port improvements?

------
kozak
They have a pretty interesting description of their radar images: "...because
of how strange the world looks in radar. Photons of that wavelength travel
easily through fog, dust, rain and snow, but anything metallic looks like a
mirror. The radar can see people, but they appear partially translucent.
Something made of wood or painted plastic, though opaque to a person, is
almost as transparent as glass to radar".

So my question is, where can I find such images? Or can I buy such a radar and
tinker with it myself? What wavelength are they speaking about?

------
nradov
The Jalopnik review of the video was pretty critical, essentially claiming
that the test was done under the best possible conditions and this doesn't
demonstrate that Tesla is getting any closer to automatic driving on more
typical roads. (I don't know whether that's right or wrong, just thought it
was an interesting analysis.)

[http://jalopnik.com/teslas-proof-video-for-their-self-
drivin...](http://jalopnik.com/teslas-proof-video-for-their-self-driving-tech-
isnt-ver-1788018454)

------
probe
Can someone speak to Tesla's approach of collecting real-world data, and
Google's approach of "simulating" roads and conditions and running self-
driving models on that (so technically their vehicles drive millions of miles
on simulated roads).

Intuitively Tesla's approach makes more sense, but would love to hear someone
with domain knowledge on how much of a difference it can actually make (after
all, you need quality training data and Tesla may now have to navigate through
significant more noise).

~~~
gakada
Not an expert, but what you describe is testing different parts of the system.
Real world data tests that the sensor system is creating an accurate model of
the environment, whereas simulated data ensures that the vehicle makes correct
decisions for any given input model.

e.g. real world data tests that the vehicle can detect a stop sign. Simulated
data tests that the vehicle stops at a stop sign.

------
fareesh
1) If a self-driving car is involved in an accidental death. Is the justice
system equipped to effectively hold a trial where information like logs,
debugging information, etc. are discussed in court to validate whether or not
there is any liability on the part of the manufacturer, considering the car is
driving itself?

2) What happens in the case of bugs or system-level crashes? What is it about
car software that makes it "not broken" compared to the other software we
write?

------
tlb
*braking (not breaking). You'd think car company staff would know how to spell a word representing 1/2 of the control space of a car.

edit: fixed, never mind.

~~~
poleapple
It was probably just a typo that the couple of people who wrote and edited the
announcement didn't catch. I am doubtful of the correlation you are implying
between their spelling of braking and their braking system.

~~~
amonette
Looks like they just fixed the typo in an OTA software update anyway.

------
jsingleton
Video:
[https://player.vimeo.com/video/188105076](https://player.vimeo.com/video/188105076)

------
hokkos
I wonder, do they upload all the camera videos taken during driving in
grayscale low-res video through 4G to be computed though their neural net at
Tesla ? What hardware do they have in the car to process the video, the Jetson
TX1 can use up to 6 cameras or 1400 Mpix/s, but they probably use low-res
output for neural net usage. I wonder what drivers think of their privacy.

~~~
scarlac
Yes, it will be processed live in the car. From the article:

> To make sense of all of this data, a new onboard computer with more than 40
> times the computing power of the previous generation runs the new Tesla-
> developed neural net for vision, sonar and radar processing software.

In the beginning, it's very likely some data will be uploaded in bulk, for
Tesla to analyze, particularly while they are running the passive tests to
correct their models.

------
vladimir-y
When it will be possible to use Tesla having no driving license? So I just get
in the car as a passenger, like a taxi, but without a driver.

------
nodesocket
Was there an event or video? Seems strange that Elon delayed this announcement
from Monday if it's just a blog post (press release).

~~~
dyarosla
Commented above too but it looks like making a video took the extra few days:
"Will post video of a Tesla navigating a complex urban environment shortly.
That was what took the extra couple of days."
[https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/788902908175618049](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/788902908175618049)

~~~
nodesocket
Ok, makes sense. Thanks for the tweet link.

------
WhiteOwlLion
Seems like Tesla is moving forward with much regard for safety nor technical
advancement. Disappointed Tesla could back up and park in one motion. It also
went too far forward to back up. You don't need to that much room. How is it
going to handle itself on Market St when it finds a spot but the bus behind it
has to go around?

------
krmboya
I wonder how this will compare against geohotz' comma.ai aftermarket self
driving kit that he promises to ship by end of year.

He calls his company's technology level 3, which is more like autopilot, as
opposed to level 4, which is a fully autonomous self driving car e.g.
Google's.

Does Tesla aim to eventually have a fully autonomous self driving car?

~~~
photogrammetry
With respect to your first inquiry, we have no way to know.

With respect to your second question, yes. Tesla does aim to eventually have a
fully autonomous SDC, and have stated it innumerable times.

------
tonylemesmer
"The person in the driver seat is only there for legal reasons" \- how do
Tesla reconcile this with the "summon" feature? How can they market the summon
feature and say the Tesla could find you on the other side of the country
unless it has someone in the driving seat touching the steering wheel?

~~~
maxerickson
It's a demonstration of the technology they have, not of the technology that
will be available to consumers tomorrow (the hardware is in the cars, the
software isn't).

Part of getting the software deployed will be figuring out the legal
situation.

~~~
tonylemesmer
I see. Yes on their website it says "...on private property."

------
achou
Compared to the autopilot I've experienced in my model S, this video shows
these features (and probably some more I missed):

\- following a path from a map instead of following a specific lane of
traffic.

\- turns

\- recognition of stop signs and light signals

\- highway onramp and offramp

\- self-parking that finds its own parking spot and works without driver in
the vehicle

\- better music than I have on my playlist

------
dyarosla
Who's providing all this hardware? EIGHT surround cameras and TWELVE
ultrasonic sensors: Are they building this in house too? If not, that's a lot
of business to a supplier... all I could find about camera suppliers for Tesla
was their former camera (tech?) supplier Mobileye.

~~~
phsource
EDIT: Ignore the first paragraph below; @dyarosia mentioned correctly they're
working on their own vision system, so they probably buy generic camera units.

(IGNORE THIS: The surround cameras are likely still in collaboration with
Mobileye, since in their case, Mobileye doesn't just give the camera hardware
but also has a fair bit of software that makes all the cameras come together.
It's not too likely Tesla's duplicated this so quickly.)

Ultrasonic sensors though are dirt cheap (in the few dollars range), and they
probably come from one of the many tier 1 suppliers (Bosch, Delphi, etc) that
makes them. These are the technology that powered those beeping back distance
sensors for 10+ years.

The real news here is that again, LiDAR is absent. It seems like Tesla's
pretty confident they can get to full autonomous self driving without the
point cloud data that LiDAR provides. Now THAT'D be impressive!

~~~
dyarosla
But I thought that they had gone separate ways? ""When Tesla refused to cancel
its own vision development activities and plans for deployment, Mobileye
discontinued hardware support for future platforms and released public
statements implying that this discontinuance was motivated by safety concerns"

from

[http://www.cnbc.com/2016/09/16/tesla-says-mobileye-balked-
af...](http://www.cnbc.com/2016/09/16/tesla-says-mobileye-balked-after-
learning-carmaker-to-make-own-cameras.html)

And yes ofc, the LiDAR absence is interesting; just not what I'm asking about
here.

~~~
phsource
Good catch! I think you're right; Tesla probably now buys pretty generic
cameras (from various suppliers) and then integrates them, so the cost is
definitely not that much.

------
chillingeffect
It's sad how presenting such solid, undeniable evidence results in a downtrend
in valuation:

[http://finance.yahoo.com/news/tesla-shares-just-took-
dive-14...](http://finance.yahoo.com/news/tesla-shares-just-took-
dive-140327021.html)

~~~
netsharc
It's still marketing... Tesla says "Autopilot" and has a lot of small print
that says "This is not self-driving!". Google has a lot of research but has so
far not made any jazzy "Self-driving cars are here!" claims or videos. And
this video shows a sunny day on well-defined roads and low traffic. What about
rain or snow?

------
sssilver
Man I sure hope human-driven vehicles/internal combustion engines won't be
deemed illegal in my lifetime. I still enjoy driving my motorcycle down the
road, feeling the engine vibe on my fingertips, and hearing it click click
rumble rumble vroom. This video made me worry.

~~~
tzakrajs
Just get an amendement to the constitution and you can use it for as long as
you would like!

------
chx
My stance is very simple: when I can buy a car in Vancouver, BC without a
driver's license I will be at the car salon door / preorder page / whatever,
midnight movie release style to buy one and I won't ask about the price. Just
make it happen, please.

~~~
thirdsun
I'm pretty sure it'll be a long time before you aren't any longer expected to
take over your autonomous vehicle at any point and therefore won't need a
driving license.

~~~
chx
I'm only 41 years old. Patience is a virtue.

------
relics443
1\. I want this!!!! 2\. Too much anxiety, I'll wait until they have a couple
billion more miles

------
aerovistae
Some of what they describe sounds like it's going to take some real adjustment
before it stops being annoying and starts being useful, namely the assumption
of what you want when you get in and out.

> If you don’t say anything, the car will look at your calendar and take you
> there as the assumed destination or just home if nothing is on the calendar.

Oh boy. If you get in your car, it will just assume it should start driving
somewhere more or less immediately? What if you want to sit for a few minutes?

I know, I'm taking them very literally. Just saying, though.

> When you arrive at your destination, simply step out at the entrance and
> your car will enter park seek mode, automatically search for a spot and park
> itself.

Again, what if I'm unpacking things for the car, or don't want the car to go
anywhere? I don't want to have to pull out my phone and tap on something to
stop it rolling away, or jump in front of it or something, or open a door.

Hopefully it obeys simple voice commands directed towards it like "wait here
for now."

~~~
nardi
These seem like straw-man criticisms.

> Oh boy. If you get in your car, it will just assume it should start driving
> somewhere more or less immediately? What if you want to sit for a few
> minutes?

You think they won't have a "Go" button on the 17" touchscreen?

> Again, what if I'm unpacking things for the car, or don't want the car to go
> anywhere? I don't want to have to pull out my phone and tap on something to
> stop it rolling away, or jump in front of it or something, or open a door.

Again—there is a 17" touchscreen right there. You don't control your car with
your phone or your voice. Have you never seen a Tesla?

~~~
aerovistae
I own one, and I can control it with both my voice and my phone.

Have you ever seen one?

------
Gustomaximus
Another reason we want better battery life on phones. I can imagine a scenario
when your car goes and parks itself and you come looking for it without phone
battery. Super cool though. Love how they are challenging such a significant
and resourced industry.

------
andys627
I'm curious to see when cities will start changing their zoning for this new
reality. The most exciting to me is elimination of parking minimums - these
add a lot to the cost of building anything and take up very valuable/well
located space.

------
rbf
I wonder if our Model X that was put in production yesterday will have the new
hardware..

------
geertj
This does it for me. I have seen the future. Today I will register for a Model
3.

------
Overtonwindow
WOW. SIGN. ME. UP! ...if I could only afford a Tesla. That was really
impressive.

------
jsingleton
The cameras look monochrome from the video. Or is this just editing?

If true then I'm surprised that colour data is not used. You would have to
detect a red stop light from just its position rather than it also being red.

------
jdiez17
Here's a video of their full self-driving system in action:
[https://www.tesla.com/autopilot/](https://www.tesla.com/autopilot/)

------
eriknstr
Direct link to video only:
[https://player.vimeo.com/video/188105076](https://player.vimeo.com/video/188105076)

------
anindha
At 2m 25s the car on the wrong side of the road.

[http://imgur.com/a/7ZOMi](http://imgur.com/a/7ZOMi)

------
627467
Personally I'm looking forward to how PRIVATE self-driving cars solves hunting
for parking problem. It's a great social problem to solve.

------
rocky1138
What I want to see is a video compilation of all of the cool things it does
when it encounters accidents and near-misses.

------
GeorgeAnka
It's crazy, I can't belive that it will be works if will be only autonomous
cars. It will be a lot of deadlocs.

------
codeulike
These cars are actually robots. In disguise.

------
chrismealy
No pedestrians, bikes, ambulances, construction, just dead surburban roads.
The perfect car for the zombie apocalypse.

------
niftich
Is this a formal model-year revision/refresh, or just a midyear 'minor
revision' thing (despite being a major revision?) Are old models
retrofittable? Will this hurt the resale value of existing Teslas that have
the last generation hardware?

Is there an industry-standard (or governmental) safety test that these
autonomous systems have to go through to evaluate their efficacy and
performance in different scenarios?

(edit: clarified the first sentence)

~~~
weaksauce
The old models actually had pretty weak sensors which indirectly caused the
death of that one guy who used autopilot and t-boned a trailer.

> Eight surround cameras provide 360 degree visibility around the car at up to
> 250 meters of range.

Previously that was just one camera mounted in front of the rear view mirror

> Twelve updated ultrasonic sensors complement this vision, allowing for
> detection of both hard and soft objects at nearly twice the distance of the
> prior system.

Same number as before except instead of 16' of range it will be 32' of range.

> A forward-facing radar with enhanced processing provides additional data
> about the world on a redundant wavelength, capable of seeing through heavy
> rain, fog, dust and even the car ahead.

same number and position of radar sensors as before but possibly a beefed up
type for inclement weather. I don't know what the prior one was capable of.

~~~
will_hughes
> The old models actually had pretty weak sensors which indirectly caused the
> death of that one guy who used autopilot and t-boned a trailer.

Saying it was the sensors that caused the guys death is like saying it was the
powerstation that generated the electricity that ran the car causing his
death.

He was told, repeatedly, to keep his hands on the steering wheel and to watch
the surrounding environment. He even apparently understood the limitations of
the system, having recorded a number of scenarios (many of which are
situations where AP shouldn't have been engaged anyway) where the car's
ability to handle the situation was marginal at best.

So, him deciding to (apparently) watch a video on a tablet while driving down
a public highway isn't really the fault of the AP system.

~~~
weaksauce
that's the indirectly part. he absolutely should have been paying attention
and kept his hands on the wheel but it was in the uncanny valley of it really
works pretty damn well 95% of the time until it doesn't. the sensor and the
system failed there.

------
lai
Does this mean we get self-driving capabilities without paying more for it as
an add-on?

------
rocky1138
How does their autonomous car compare to nvidia's?

~~~
will_hughes
It's probably using NVidia's self-driving hardware compute platform under the
hood with Tesla's own software on it.

------
sharrs
Wow this is awesome!

------
xadhominemx
Fake video... Page Mill is not backed up onto 280

------
ghaff
Tesla may also want to consider better copyediting of press releases:
"emergency breaking." Yeah, it happens. But it looks bad.

~~~
Moshe_Silnorin
Musk is a notorious grammar Nazi, so he may go after whomever is responsible.
They could be in trouble.

~~~
throwanem
As would you now be if you worked for him! "Whom" is the objective case of
"who", and correctly replaces e.g. "him", not "he".

~~~
Moshe_Silnorin
I though it would be funny to edit my comment to me it look like I was right
all along. On reflection, this was petty. My original comment was mistaken in
just the manner described.

------
cdelsolar
Sorry but it absolutely needs LIDAR.

------
alinspired
tesla might not be comfortable releasing new software for update hardware in
production

~~~
lathiat
they do this all the time, it's a key part of their strategy

------
elchief
Wow, what a bunch of negative nellies on here. I hope you people have mildly
unpleasant evenings.

Congrats Tesla! That's amazing.

~~~
forgetsusername
> _Congrats Tesla! That 's amazing._

Can you describe what's so amazing about it? They're planning to put
temporarily non-functional autonomous driving hardware on their new cars, with
the intention to use it when the software is ready at some unknown point in
the future.

~~~
elchief
So cynical

It's a small but useful step forward toward a very cool future

------
laktak
How to steal some cars:

    
    
      - hack into a car remotely
      - tell the car to drive to your parking lot
      - repeat

~~~
Klathmon
How to steal some cars:

    
    
        - tow the car
        - repeat
    

Anything can be made to seem simple when you oversimplify it.

------
tempestn
> features such as automatic emergency breaking

Always an amusing typo. I'll take the car without emergency breaking...

------
nsxwolf
I'm going to buy a bunch of Teslas and sit home and watch the money roll in
from my own private Uber.

------
kordless
Shut up and take my money.

------
pyabo
KITT I need you!

------
wehadfun
oh shit!

------
hash-set
I get that tech companies want self-driving cars really bad because they smell
billions of dollars in "disruption" but no matter how good AI gets, I have a
suspicion it won't actually do better than a decent human driver can do. It's
not about processing speed, it's about experience and reflexes, which granted,
not everyone has.

Let's see a self-driving car win a Formula 1 race--and even that controlled
racetrack environment isn't the same as the real world! It's actually harder
to drive on the typical American roadways than it is to be on a track.

And yes, I am aware that AI stuff is improving exponentially or whatever, but
the more I think about this, the more I think it is mostly a pipe dream to
grab headlines and be a "look over here" type distraction for the purposes of
raising funding.

In terms of safety, people will still lose their lives, they will just die
from different kinds of car accidents than the kinds we have now.

~~~
IndianAstronaut
>In terms of safety, people will still lose their lives, they will just die
from different kinds of car accidents than the kinds we have now

If self driving cars kill 20 thousand people a year, it would still be a major
improvement. 30 thousand people die every year from human drivers.

~~~
jjnoakes
I don't think stats will be enough to overcome the human perception factor.
Self driving cars have what I consider to be an insurmountable pr problem.

~~~
Frogolocalypse
I think americans are going to get left behind in this technology. It's not
just the crumbling infrastructure, it's the lack of public transport options.
I expect there will be plenty of cities around the world that will be adopting
self-driving car technology long before the US does.

~~~
chc
Surely lack of mass transit would be a boon to self-driving cars. Public
transportation makes owning a car — self-driving or otherwise — less
necessary.

~~~
Frogolocalypse
The people who use public transport are much more likely to be users of share
drive services. The target people for this technology, at least at the
beginning, aren't going to be suburban or rural people, but urban people, and
especially people with constraints such as no garage's or associated services
and infrastructure. Any walk around New York, Singapore, or London, will
demonstrate this.

These people will already be using public transport. They won't want to own a
car if they don't need to. They'll want the convenience of a car, without the
inconvenience of parking it and owning it. As more people do it, the costs
associated with doing alternate things will increase (except, probably, for
public transport). As less infrastructure is available for cars that sit empty
all day in car parks, that empty-car infrastructure will get more expensive.
When some bright spark recognizes that the space now occupied by a car-park,
in a high-density city environment, can be turned into multi-million-dollar
apartments, with a small private fleet of self-driving cars for their
residents, there aren't too many wealthy people that won't want to have that
property and service. There will be billions to be made.

All of these reasons, and more (like the insurance thing I talked about), I
think, will contribute to it overtaking traditional methods of driving quite
quickly when it is introduced.

------
tzakrajs
The off-ramp scene seemed precarious like a pinball down a bumper lane.

------
notliketherest
This is awesome! Talk about a huge training data competitive advantage over
Google, GM, Uber, etc

------
honkhonkpants
A little skepticism is OK here. I don't think cheerleading is helpful. One
possible interpretation of this video is Tesla is five years behind Google.

~~~
savagej
Google sells cars?

------
andrewvijay
Wow. Just wow. Amazing! Hope it changes everything forever. For a while I
thought it was driving way too fast then realized that it was just fast
played.

------
donohoe
So, lets be clear then, you do not truly own the car.

Am reminded of ebook and movie purchases - you're only just licensing the
item. You own next to nothing.

~~~
rorykoehler
Do you really care about owning something that much? What difference does it
make if it gets you from A to B all the same?

~~~
ddalex
Exactly this one: [http://arstechnica.com/cars/2016/10/dont-plan-on-using-an-
au...](http://arstechnica.com/cars/2016/10/dont-plan-on-using-an-autonomous-
tesla-to-earn-money-with-uber-or-lyft/)

When you own nothing, and license everything, what's stopping the licensor to
ban you, or just increase the prices as they want?

~~~
rorykoehler
Competition?

------
thesimon
>While this is occurring, Teslas with new hardware will temporarily lack
certain features currently available on Teslas with first-generation Autopilot
hardware, including some standard safety features such as automatic emergency
breaking, collision warning, lane holding and active cruise control.

But not software and they don't even have confidence in their current
implementation?

It's not surprising considering the recent announcements by the regulators,
but that's quite a step.

~~~
grzm
> But not software and they don't even have confidence in their current
> implementation.

I think it's quite forward thinking for them to include the hardware when it's
ready, knowing they can update the software in the future. And I'd prefer them
to be conservative in rolling out the software for an automobile. Not
something I'd want to see beta tested on the highway.

~~~
thesimon
>Not something I'd want to see beta tested on the highway.

It's not like the previous-gen cars aren't on the highway at the moment. Or
has "autopilot" been deactivated in the meanwhile?

I understand their step to add better sensors for the future (even though it
seems difficult without LIDAR). But disabling autopilot for new cars with
better sensors and keeping it enabled for older ones seems like a strange
step.

~~~
tokipin
i'm guessing that the data is just plain too different (probably no more
mobileye sensors, for example) and not worth adapting to the older ML models
(which itself would require extensive testing) when the new system is going to
end up with different ML models anyways.

[edit] Tesla previously hired Jim Keller (chip designer) into the autopilot
team. considering the kinds of things he may be working on, i'd be surprised
if the differences in either the sensors or GPUs aren't significant.

~~~
thesimon
Fair enough.

------
untilHellbanned
This company's self driving cars are gonna have serious problems because their
business roadmap is all over the place. This is not just wordplay, I'm
serious.

------
nchelluri
Did you see how close the guys hands were to gripping the steering wheel?
Obvious he didn't trust it completely :)

Still, very cool. And the presence of cameras everywhere should help navigate
insurance/accident stuff everywhere, I'd hope.

~~~
ohitsdom
It's literally his job to be ready to take over in case of an emergency or
malfunction.

------
flexie
Are the cars going to look like Google's and Uber's self driving cars, then?

I never cared that much about self driving capabilities - I like to drive
myself - and I certainly don't want to shell out $35,000 for a car with what
looks like a food processor or a police emergency light mounted on the
rooftop.

IMHO, one of the best features of Tesla has been that they actually made EVs
look like traditional cars. It might seem trivial, but many of the budding
competitors still fail to do just that:

[http://www.autoblog.com/2016/08/17/vw-300-mile-ev-paris-
auto...](http://www.autoblog.com/2016/08/17/vw-300-mile-ev-paris-auto-show-
report/)

[https://www.mercedes-benz.com/en/mercedes-
benz/design/commer...](https://www.mercedes-benz.com/en/mercedes-
benz/design/commercial-vehicles/concept-cars-commercial-vehicles/generation-
eq-electro-look/)

~~~
JauntyHatAngle
Those are concept cars, concept cars always look like that before the final
designs come about.

Fashion does the same thing.

~~~
aianus
The 'final designs' of other companies' EVs still look ridiculous.

Volt, Leaf, i8, none of them look like regular cars like Teslas do.

~~~
NeutronBoy
'Regular cars' look like they do because of design limitations imposed by
things like fuel tanks, engines, and gearboxes.

~~~
blkhawk
I think the fact that it needs to have Wheels and be aerodynamic as possible
while having a decent amount of interior space has more to do with it. And
even without a motor you still need a crumple zone for safety.

