[mcorning]

It is seeming more likely by the year that Tesla is one of the biggest over estimators when it come self-driving cars. Musk has repeatedly promised "autonomous vehicles", and even promised to have a fully autonomous vehicle by the end of this year. He is notorious for his rather bold and exciting predictions, but fewer and fewer seem to come to fruition with each passing year. It seems especially unlikely considering Tesla doesn't even test any autonomous vehicles on public roads, unlike many other companies in the space: https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/96c89ec9-aca6-4910...

It's disappointing to hear that Ford overestimated, however, it's reassuring that they publicly recognize the challenges and also put safety above being first out the door.

[Shivetya]

disclaimer, own a TM3 with full autopilot and purchased full self driving.

I have never believed they will deliver much more than level 3. I did buy the FSD package recently when it was discounted mostly for resale value; it was 2k; and not faith in the technology.

Too many companies want to label it a safety feature yet for the most part it doesn't operate like most safety features. almost all demos we see are fair weather events on simple roads or in some cases systems which can operate on specific roads. so I think they focus too much of the navigation part.

I am more interested in full self driving technology if it leads to more passive safety features like the forward emergency braking. as in an always on system which watches "over your back". that to me is the real value of all this research.

(personal usage stuff is below)

now don't get me wrong, Tesla's system is amazing for what it does do. It certainly isn't full self driving but it offers many of the features people could use to augment their driving. I used it for the majority of a six hundred mile drive both directions. It was useful in rush hour traffic, the stop and go variety, as well as the long haul.

two reasons I found it valuable. first being on long drives I engage it but still maintain the presence of mind to take over when I need to. In this mode I am using it to handle situations when I am distracted. The old issue of looking in your rear view mirror and seeing a bridge you went under but don't remember. I also used it on a typical mid Western two lane road at night in the pouring rain. It helped alleviate fears caused by the constant issue of people with poorly aimed lights or not dimming high beams. The car never lost track of the lanes whereas a few times I was having to hard focus on the white line to avoid being blinded by one of those hibeam drivers.

[Shebanator]

I agree 100% on why I purchased FSD at $2k. But I'll add that I almost never use Autopilot, as I've had too many negative experiences with it. I do frequently use (and generally love) the smart cruise control feature, though - steering the car in traffic just isn't that much work for me and I don't have to worry about the car lunging to the side when an exit ramp splits off.

[ummonk]

Yup, have a Subaru and adaptive cruise control is great, but I doubt I'd want auto-steer. Steering just isn't much work but keeps you attentive without causing the fatigue that speed management does.

[sorenjan]

Tesla's big bet on autonomous driving is very strange to me. They already have a unique selling point with fully electric cars with good performance and design, why are they overextending themselves to try to be first to market with such an advanced and difficult feature? They're a small company with little money, focus on the fundamentals of selling cars first.

It's like the falcon doors on the X, unnecessary, expensive, and caused delays when regular doors would have been just fine. But no, Tesla had to be different, for what? Elon's ego wanted cool doors?

[Traster]

The problem is that to get where they are they've needed huge investment and issued huge amounts of debt. They are only able to do that because of the huge valuation justified by self-driving technology. If they end up as a company churning out great electric vehicles that is not going to justify being valued at 50% more than Ford.

What costs Tesla money is building great big battery factories and car factories, meanwhile the the software engineers working on self-driving are a relative drop in the bucket but justify probably 80% of the market cap.

[mikeash]

Their market cap was already over $30 billion in August 2014, before the first version of Autopilot was announced.

[antiterra]

It may not be enough to validate the choice, but the falcon doors make the X a minivan without the stigma of a minivan.

[jdhn]

I'd say that the X is more of a crossover than a minivan. A true minivan would be the FCA Town & Country, Toyota Sienna, or Honda Odyssey.

[mikeash]

Other SUVs accomplish that with regular doors.

[StreamBright]

He is lucky if we have self driving cars by the end of the next decade. I am sorry but false positive and false negative situations are not ok when it comes to self driving cars and most if not all solution exist today are based on technologies that produce false positives and negatives.

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/03/feds-investigating-dead...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2ml6sjk_8c

[LoSboccacc]

> Tesla is one of the biggest over estimators

Tesla promised that the current hardware the cars come with is all it's needed to implement autonomous driving at some point in the future, which is currently an unknown unknown. if that doesn't scream of snake oil, I don't know what does.

[deytempo]

Reason Tesla is having trouble with autonomous vehicles: Elon Musk != Nikola Tesla.