Sorry, that's against the site rules and all. But what else is there to say about such colossal delusion and doubletalk?
If they'd said, for instance, 'full driving' we'd have thought sure, it has all the features but still, take care it might be buggy.
If they'd said 'self driving' again we'd think, it can do it but maybe not in all circumstances.
But they said it all; 'Full self-driving' means it does the whole enchilada. It can mean nothing else. It's normal English, well-understood by anybody who is listening. No ambiguity. No wiggle room.
These guys ought to be enjoined to stop selling their irresponsible death machines.
It's mind blowing what Tesla and Musk are allowed to do.
And don't get me started about the doubletalk ! Musk clearly thinks he's above the law now (and for some reason, this seems to be the case for now). There are countless other examples, some are not even debatable.
For example, when he bought the first 9% of Twitter. Legally, he should have disclose that at 5% threshold - which he did not. It's estimated that it saved him ~$150 million. There is nothing to debate - the law is clear, and he intentionally did not disclose his buying. One would think that it's not a complicated case, yet still 1 year after there is nothing done ! Nothing. SEC is suing him now, but ... not really for wrongdoing ! They want to bring him to testify. I don't know what's going on, but clearly he's getting a lot of free passes.
That’s the problem when you get too big, isn’t it? Musk now has $149 million extra that he can spend on fighting legal battles with the SEC and still come out at least a million ahead. Does the SEC have $149m in spare resources to fight this fight?
Unfortunately this is the math I believe the enforcement agencies have to do.
What does $149M get you in a legal argument? I realize this must seem like a very naive question, but if the law said "you must disclose at 5%", and someone fails to do so, shouldn't that be a simple case?
Nikola, the EV truck company, was full of shit. The truck couldn't drive under its own power. Tesla FSD on the other hand, is just not as good as advertised. Kinda like how a Lindt Truffle isn't velvety bliss, or a 787 Dreamliner is still hard to sleep on, or even BMW's excessively superlative "ultimate driving machine." The 4 cylinder Z3 was a terrible vehicle.
One can wish FSD means perfection in every circumstance all the time, and Tesla certainly implied in its marketing that it is. In reality, FSD is really amazing at times and 'what-the-hell was it thinking' at times. But it does control speed, steering, braking, obstacle avoidance, traffic maneuvering, parking, navigation in a manner that, yes, I would call "Full Self Driving." It is very far from perfect, and Tesla has certainly communicated it as being better than it really is. there's a high dose of caveat emptor, but FSD does a lot more than any other car I've ever driven or owned. The fact that I will not let it attempt to navigate certain intersections, either out of embarrassment or risk of getting hit, does not diminish the fact that my car will give it the ol' college try.
I do think Tesla should get a substantial hand slap though, and should be required to give an extended free trial to everyone to see exactly what it is that FSD can and cannot do, and also give those who purchased FSD outright an extended refund window.
The difference between saying your car is "the ultimate driving experience" and that your car has a "full self driving" mode is the difference between puffery and straight up fraud.
If I asked 100 people what "ultimate driving experience" meant, I would get 43 different answers, 58 of them being people telling me it's bullshit nothingness.
If I asked 100 people what it meant for a car to be "full self-driving," 99 would say it means the car could fully drive itself. The final one is too busy sucking up to Elon.
No, you took the analogy too far. It's just a trademark name that doesn't fully live up to the hype. Let's look at GM's Supercruise, which is marketed as "hands free driving." Well guess what: you still need hands to drive it.
I believe people are being overly dramatic and think they are entitled for Elon's overcommitment. I agree that Tesla overpromised and underdelivered. Meanwhile, I am happy to use and optionally pay for FSD as delivered. It is really an amazing technology and significant.
> The fact that I will not let it attempt to navigate certain intersections, either out of embarrassment or risk of getting hit, does not diminish the fact that my car will give it the ol' college try.
If there are regularly occurring street driving situations it can't be trusted in for safety reasons, even (perhaps especially) it if it "will give it the ol' college try" in those circumstances, I suppose you can argue whether that indicates that it is fraudulent to describe it as "Full Self-Driving" or if it is merely defective Full Self-Driving, but I think that that's a fairly fine distinction in what Tesla has done wrong.
> and should be required to give an extended free trial to everyone to see exactly what it is that FSD can and cannot do
That seems to be exactly the wrong solution for a system which, by your own description, is unsafe in some of the situations one would reasonably expect "Full Self-Driving" to handle.
It does work, though. That's all I'm saying. I totally agree that the marketing implies it should be more reliable. In my experience, in all circumstances, it errs in being painfully cautious, which is where I intervene.
I mean, I pay $200/mo for FSD because I like it so much.
I've said it before: We're past the point Elon is solely responsible. We need to start looking at the blatant negligence of government officials at both state and federal levels for letting him get away with it for so long. We are so far past the point anyone could possibly believe anyone letting this continue has good intentions.
It is (was?) actually called Full Self-Driving Beta, which to an engineer does explicitly indicate that bugs are to be expected. Not sure if they're still calling it Beta, but at the time of this accident they certainly were.
Sorry, that's against the site rules and all. But what else is there to say about such colossal delusion and doubletalk?
If they'd said, for instance, 'full driving' we'd have thought sure, it has all the features but still, take care it might be buggy.
If they'd said 'self driving' again we'd think, it can do it but maybe not in all circumstances.
But they said it all; 'Full self-driving' means it does the whole enchilada. It can mean nothing else. It's normal English, well-understood by anybody who is listening. No ambiguity. No wiggle room.
These guys ought to be enjoined to stop selling their irresponsible death machines.