
Tesla Tests Self-Driving Functions with Secret Updates to Its Customers’ Cars - prostoalex
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601567/tesla-tests-self-driving-functions-with-secret-updates-to-its-customers-cars/
======
Amorymeltzer
For those reacting to the headline and first few paragraphs:

>Tesla’s engineers initially test new self-driving software against those
records. Any that perform well can also be tested by secretly installing them
onto customer vehicles and watching how they respond to conditions on the
road, although the software doesn't actually control the car.

>“We will often install an ‘inert’ feature on all our vehicles worldwide,”
said Anderson. “That allows us to watch over tens of millions of miles how a
feature performs.”

The article is sparse on details, but this little bit buried in the middle
certainly seems to allay the fear I (and others here) immediately felt. It
looks like Tesla tests software, then pushes it out without giving up any
control of the car; the software simply logs what it _would_ have done.

This is huge. No matter your in-house testing, there will always be bugs, but
if Tesla can test software across 2 million miles a day, and in varied
conditions, without any risks, I'd imagine a faster, less error-prone
pipeline, leaps and bounds over the other teams.

~~~
vvanders
Yep, whenever someone say that GM/Ford/VW is going to destroy Tesla with their
better mfg experience this is one of the things I drive home as Tesla's real
advantage(along with the supercharger network).

Seeing the changes in the ~1 year we've owned a Model S has been incredible.
For each new feature they add/improve they increase the value across the
_whole fleet_ (assuming AP hardware/etc).

Heck, they've said they already have a huge mapping network, you could start
giving some of the major mapping companies a run for their money just with
that data alone.

~~~
pseudometa
The networked transportation sensor suite is insanely valuable and it seems to
completely be overlooked by both competitors and investors. Between this, the
energy storage business, and obviously the vehicles, I am excited to see what
they can do.

------
simonsarris
Sterling Anderson (Tesla Director of Autopilot Programs) was a researcher at
MIT for a long time before joining Tesla. I'm surprised the article (MIT
Technology Review) doesn't mention this. I'm also surprised they didn't link
to his video presentation, since they are the ones that put on the event. Here
it is:

[http://events.technologyreview.com/emtech/digital/16/video/w...](http://events.technologyreview.com/emtech/digital/16/video/watch/sterling-
anderson-autonomous-vehicles/)

> he showed a chart illustrating how self-driving Teslas using the Autopilot
> feature hold themselves much more tightly to the center of the lane than
> humans do when steering the car.

There are a couple slides form Anderson's talk in this other article,
including the one that this article mentions:

[http://electrek.co/2016/05/24/tesla-autopilot-miles-
data/](http://electrek.co/2016/05/24/tesla-autopilot-miles-data/)

------
xsmasher
This is a huge competitive advantage for Tesla. Google is running a few test
cars around mountain view, while Tesla is gathering training data from 50k
cars already on the road.

~~~
Shivetya
I would hope its not truly being done without notification and agreement of
the customer. That is just rude and should be illegal.

The car should tell me each and every time the manufacture did something and
what it was. I should have to actively agree to be part of any test regardless
if my direct involvement is required or not.

~~~
onion2k
Many modern cars have an "event data recorder" that holds information about
pretty much everything when you're driving. Admittedly they only hold about 30
seconds worth of information (in case you crash) but the point here is that
tracking what you do isn't a new thing and expanding the period the data is
held for would be trivial.

~~~
toomuchtodo
[http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2013/03/20/174...](http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2013/03/20/174827589/yes-
your-new-car-has-a-black-box-wheres-the-off-switch)

------
pseudometa
This article takes a lot of liberty in promoting the idea that "secret
updates" are actually a thing. Sterling Anderson simply says “We will often
install an ‘inert’ feature on all our vehicles worldwide,” And from that, the
author makes it out as some nefarious endeavor.

------
roflchoppa
If anyone at Tesla is reading this, can we see some information of what the
car does when it senses that there is a motorcycle lane splitting. Most
drivers will adjust to the far side of their lane, what do the autobots do?
(unless someone has a Tesla and can tell me)

~~~
brianpan
As a motorcyclist, if the Tesla just maintains its course that would be
perfect. And when they get to switching lanes, if they signal before they
move, that would be perfect.

I don't need cars to move over (what if there's a motorcycle on the other
side?). I just need stable, predictable behavior.

If you are a driving a car and you move over when I come, I don't mind.
Because that tells me you probably see me and makes you a little more
predictable.

~~~
gumby
> Because that tells me you probably see me

Thats the main reason I do it, as well as to be polite and leave you a bit
more space.

------
11thEarlOfMar
"...secretly installing them onto customer vehicles..."

Do Tesla owners explicitly consent to this? As in terms and condition of sale
state that they give Tesla permission to update the software on their car
without informing them? If so, is that condition transferred to subsequent
owners if the car is resold?

Where I am from, secretly installing software on a customer's hardware is
really bad form, and would get you sued if discovered.

~~~
gervase
I believe owners sign a document at time of purchase permitting a wide variety
of remote access and logging, but they can opt out if they wish.

Whether the owners are reading the privacy policy before agreeing to it is a
different issue.

Source:
[https://www.teslamotors.com/about/legal](https://www.teslamotors.com/about/legal)

------
aab0
> “Since introducing this hardware 18 months ago we’ve accrued 780 million
> miles,” said Anderson. “We can use all of that data on our servers to look
> for how people are using our cars and how we can improve things.” Every 10
> hours Tesla gets another million miles worth of data, he said.

For those following the space, this is an amusing quote, because a RAND study
recently came out pointing that given known human accident rates, to have a
statistically significant improvement in safety would require data from - gasp
- hundreds of millions of miles of self-driving car travel, and with an
expensive testing fleet of as many as 100 cars, why, that would take decades!

Not that the calculations were wrong, but I think everyone kinda laughed at
it, and this quote emphasizes why.

Anyway, this is the sort of method you would expect. Everyone who can records
car telemetry and does training/evaluation on simulations using that data. The
only surprising thing here, I guess, is that Tesla is doing evaluation live
rather than recording everything and pushing to Tesla servers and running the
simulations there.

~~~
visarga
It's not always straightforward to throw more data at an algorithm. Having so
many miles might not benefit them so much.

Google is doing a lot of special testing in simulators - those corner cases
that happen once in a million miles, that you'd have to drive quite a lot to
collect hundreds of examples of. Also, Google is solving the much harder
problem of full city and highway driving.

~~~
aab0
The point is that a whole fleet can rack up daunting numbers in a very short
time.

------
mdavidn
This suggests Tesla stores a recording of every driver's traffic violations.
Have they received any subpoenas for that data?

~~~
manicdee
There is no suggestion that the human's driving behaviour is recorded.

How the telemetry works is an unknown. We might speculate about it, but I
would not be surprised to see that Tesla has taken measures to prevent their
tech being used to punish their drivers for driving.

------
abalone
Testing "inert" features like this is not necessarily a bad idea. The worst
that could happen is it isn't isolated correctly -- maybe you introduce a bug
that transgresses its sandbox. Certainly Tesla's software architects spend a
LOT of time working to ensure this doesn't happen, but it is a risk.

But there is a recent case where Tesla pushed a software update that resulted
in an accident, and it wasn't an inert feature. It was a user interface
change.

In 7.1 they added a shortcut for the Autopark feature that worked like
this:[1]

1\. Double tap the park button

2\. Exit the car

3\. The car starts moving forward

So... can you guess what could go wrong with this???

Yup, a user accidentally double tapped instead of single tapped and exited the
car. The only safeguard against this was an alert on the center console.. but
it wasn't a confirmation dialog, it was merely an option to _cancel_. Terrible
UX. The user didn't notice it on the way out the door. And no other safeguards
like having to hold onto the key fob to ensure you're paying attention.

So the car moved forward and hit something in front of it that its sensors
didn't detect.[2]

What's even worse, Tesla _blamed the user._ [3] Not the kind of attitude you
want in a company pushing updates like this.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-JoZL9edlA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-JoZL9edlA)

[2] [http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/11/11656496/tesla-model-s-
aut...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/11/11656496/tesla-model-s-autonomous-
summon-mode-crash)

[3] [http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/11/11658226/tesla-model-s-
sum...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/11/11658226/tesla-model-s-summon-
autopilot-crash-letter)

------
pearjuice
With cyber warfare becoming a real thing, imagine a third party hacking into
Tesla's update mechanisms and pushing a silent update to overheat the engine
or crash into as many casualties as possible.

~~~
vkou
Imagine if a fiberglass-bodied junker from the 80s overheated it's engine...

Actually, now that I think about it, that probably happens every other week on
the local stretch of the interstate.

------
foobarqux
When did adaptive cruise control and lane keeping become "self-driving"?

