[bezoz]

I mean this in the friendliest and nicest way possible, but your arguments make you come off as extremely biased, and makes it harder to have a discussion with you. For example, a quick search reveals lane departure systems were in pretty good shape in 2010 on a Kia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lane_departure_warning_system#...). It is hard to assess your argument that Tesla can deploy their semis tomorrow... etc.

From my previous personal experience, once you start having discussions like these, the original poster gets hostile, moves the target post... etc.

[junipertea]

I am a first time car owner (with a Tesla) and yes, I struggled to explain my feelings when my friends asked "Isn't autopilot just adaptive cruise control and lane centering?"

Yes, it does just that (unless you buy the FSD scam), but it also feels like an integral part of the car instead of a addon for higher trim models. Everything (including the tablet) is centered around autopilot and it's natural to use anywhere. Would I use lane centering in a Honda or Hyundai? Maybe. I use the tempomat (cruise control) in other cars too, but I never felt comfortable in using just that to drive all the way to SF.

I don't think I would do that in a 2010 Kia. I might be wrong.

Tesla lessened my mental burden and I just watch other cars while it does its thing. I am also more confident as it watched other cars by itself using the cameras, it's like 10 pairs of eyes instead of 2.

[rblatz]

My wife’s low trim (EX) 2018 Honda CR-V has lane centering and adaptive cruise control. Basically the same thing as what Tesla’s have but it’s a single button on the wheel to turn on lane centering and a single button to turn on cruise control, no clumsy touch screen needed. We use it all the time.

[40four]

Respectfully, if you think lane centering plus adaptive cruise control is ‘basically the same’ as Tesla autopilot, you should look into a little more.

Lane centering does not allow you you totally take you hands off the wheel and let the car drive itself. It’s just a small assist to help once you’ve almost already crossed into someone else’s lane. To be fair, autopilot is not supposed to be totally hands off, you’re supposed to still touch lightly touch the wheel every few seconds. You still need to monitor it.

Adaptive cruise control is pretty nice, but only useful on high speed highways.

They aren’t even comparable really. The Tesla is truly driving itself, while the other is just an assist in case you mess up. Also Tesla is beta testing the next version of autopilot that can drive in cities, and obey traffic signals.

But, we are rapidly approaching a time where lane assist & adaptive cruise are becoming ’standard’ on most vehicles and I think that’s great.

[bootlooped]

My 2019 CR-Vs adaptive cruise control will come all the way to a full stop, and restart when the car in front goes. I say this as a refutation of the assertion that it's only good at high highway speeds.

The lane keep assist has a wide band it allows the car to ride inside. At first I was disappointed in this, I wanted it to keep the car perfectly centered at all times. However it makes sense when you consider how the car detects that you're still alert and watching the road: you have to apply some torque to the steering wheel once in a while. If the car was perfectly centered already there would be no need to do that.

I think maybe a combination system that detects gaze and not only steering adjustments but even just touching the wheel without applying pressure would be better. It would allow to lane keep to do better while still ensuring driver attentiveness.

[40four]

Hey fair enough. I’ve driven many cars with lane assist and some are better than others. But they are not meant to be used like Tesla autopilot is.

My girlfriend’s 2021 Outback has pretty amazing adaptive cruise, that will come to a complete stop as you describe. But it doesn’t work under a hard cut off of 35 miles an hour, and trying to use it outside of a highway situation is very nerve racking, which is why I said it’s not ‘useful’.

These technologies are great, and I’m excited to see the become more standard. But my point was to compare them to Tesla autopilot is apples and oranges. To think that they are the same, or they are designed for the same purposes is to not appreciate how darn good Autopilot really is.

[rblatz]

This drives itself, it gets mad if I leave my hands off too much. But it will take turns and doesn’t just bounce off the lane edges.

When I drove mr brothers model 3 I couldn’t really tell a difference.

[bmcahren]

Base auto-pilot works in stop and go traffic, understands stop lights and stop signs (stops for red), as well as highway speeds. It works through construction sites with orange cone lane changes over ignored white lines. For 90% of driving, you're not going to notice the difference. If you care about the other 5-9% and the added safety improvements of a system that actually understands the road, other vehicles, construction and not just the lane lines you should definitely consider a Tesla.

With their upgraded auto-pilot the car detects and automatically passes other drivers, takes exits, can completely handle complex interchanges by itself changing lanes to find exits while getting in the correct lane, slows while passing, gives trucks extra space on the highway, can handle complex construction zones without leaving it's often confusing lane, automatically exits the passing lane when not passing, etc.

Just the precision with which it can change lanes in dense traffic is so relieving. I hate changing lanes without it. I now spend my time keeping a close eye on idiot drivers while the car manages the lane change minutia - don't hit the car up front, make sure I have space, make sure no one is passing on the right, make sure no one is cutting off the space im trying to use from the 2nd from the right, look forward, look back, look forward again to check traffic, look back - never again.

I inherently trust the Tesla to drive better than me most of the time. I inherently trust the Tesla to drive better than 98% of other drivers.

[avereveard]

> It works through construction sites with orange cone lane changes

it only took a couple of deaths to train their ai for construction sites.

> Just the precision with which it can change lanes in dense traffic is so relieving.

parked white trucks still a issue tho.

this whole thing reads like a marketing brochure, while conveniently ignoring the trail of deaths the tesla gung-ho attitude about releases brought.

[40four]

Sorry if I was rude :) As you said you have driven your brother’s Tesla. That’s impressive that the Honda tech has gotten that good. I’ve driven many cars with lane assist and some are better than others.

You mentioned ‘bouncing off the lane edges’, and the reality is this is still where most companies are at. Which is fine because that’s all it’s supposed to be. It’s designed to be an assist when you mess up. Just a gentle nudge back to where you’re supposed to be.

I’m glad this stuff is becoming standard though it’s great tech. My point though is they are not meant to be ‘self diving’ is meant to be a safety ‘assist’.

Honestly, Elon still refuses to call it ‘self driving’ because the driver is still expected to be alert and monitor the autopilot. But the level of sophistication autopilot has is so far ahead of anything else, my point was it doesn’t make sense to compare them.

Pretty soon they will finish beta testing, and you will download an update, and the Tesla will be able to navigate complex traffic situations including cities and traffic signals.

To be fair, I saw something where Honda is supposedly developing a competitor to Tesla autopilot, but the current tech is not that. And the Honda autopilot will only be offered in Japan in a very limited quantity of some exotic $100K+ model. Who knows when those efforts will trickle down to be regular production vehicles available in America. But it’s available today in a Tesla. It’s really impressive what they have achieved!

[junipertea]

You turn on autopilot by pressing the stalk twice, there is 0 interaction with the touch screen for that purpose.

[NotSammyHagar]

Autopilot doesn't turn on with the screen. Autopilot is 2 stalk pulls, cruise control is one pull.

[NotSammyHagar]

I'm familiar with several of the pre-tesla lane keeping systems. They were terrible and were notirous for a bit of pinging between the lines. They couldn't see the edges and their algorithms lead to back and forth trying to keep in the lane. Tesla doesn't do that, it's smooth, follows the curve. There could have been a decent one. Lane following is just the smallest thing. It's different than lane departure warnings of course.

[bmcahren]

First of all, Tesla's lane departure avoidance system is active and intelligent. In 2010, Kia's system yells at you and doesn't have the capability to actively avoid an accident with another vehicle by returning you to your lane.

In-fact most systems in the last few years all only "weigh" on the steering wheel, they don't actively steer the vehicle to return it to it's lane they just know "I know you don't want to go over that line without a signal" - very different and may not avoid an accident.

If you've actually put these systems to the test like Honda's system they've had since 2015....they suck. I test drove a fully loaded 2017 Honda Accord and the mistakes it made were atrocious and dangerous. I decided to just wait for a Tesla at that point.

Case in point: God forbid you cut 1ft of the yellow line at a highway exit or the Honda will yank your steering wheel so hard you move all the way beyond the white line on the other side of your lane due to the curvature of the actual road not being accounted for properly by the naive emergency road departure system.

[craftinator]

> Case in point: God forbid you cut 1ft of the yellow line at a highway exit or the Honda will yank your steering wheel so hard you move all the way beyond the white line on the other side of your lane due to the curvature of the actual road not being accounted for properly by the naive emergency road departure system.

If that is true, there must be numerous lawsuits and recalls to account for all the deaths.

[nexuist]

Hi there!

I appreciate you being nice. I guess all Tesla posts are incredibly controversial so we just assume that posters fit into one of several predefined camps. No worries, I understand!

> 2010 on a Kia

So according to the Wiki article that would be the 2011 Kia Cadenza which I cannot for the life of me find the MSRP of. Please let me know if you do. What I could find is the MSRP of the 2021 version, which starts out at $37k (notably still more expensive than a Model 3). In addition, lane departure warning is different from lane keep (I'm sorry if this is splitting hairs but I think it is a big difference); with a warning you still have to take action but with lane keep the car will drive back to the center of the lane for you. This removes the driver's reaction time from the picture, which of course is one of the primary goals of lower-level self driving. Of course, you could argue that lane keep assist is standard on a lot of new cars today, which is my point; it wasn't standard back then, it is now, likely at least a little of that movement is due to external pressure from Tesla.

> It is hard to assess your argument that Tesla can deploy their semis tomorrow... etc.

I can try to expand on my argument:

While a semi is obviously a much different vehicle type than a sedan, Tesla already has experience deploying to different types of vehicles (S being a hatchback, 3 being a sedan, X being an SUV, Y being a crossover etc). Of course a semi is heavier but the way it drives is still the same, it just has to brake earlier than most other cars (just like an SUV at the same speed has to brake earlier than a sedan due to the weight difference). I don't claim to be an expert on self driving vehicles, but it is my perception that the physics of the car don't matter as much as it matters for the model to be able to detect and respond to stimuli, which can then be translated to physical movements for electric and hydraulic linkages. Therefore, if a Model S can detect an obstacle in front of it today and brake to avoid hitting it 99% of the time, I don't see why that same system can't be applied to a truck that weighs differently and have it still work. Yes, there is now a trailer in the mix, but Tesla owners already use Autopilot with trailers attached (for better or worse - I don't know if that's recommended or not).

Now, we could split hairs over what Urmson meant by "meaningful," but for me, meaningful self driving long haul driving translates into self driving on the highway. This means that a trucker could manually drive from depot to highway, switch on Autopilot, and then monitor the road for the next few hours until their shift is over. This is obviously not as good as being able to "set it and forget it" - such that the driver could go to bed or something like that - but I would argue it is still meaningful and upends the status quo for commercial drivers today.

Could Semi be deployed tomorrow? No, obviously, it doesn't exist outside of a few demo models that may or may not have Autopilot support yet. But my main argument is that it's being held back by the "car" stuff that we already know how to do (we know how to build electric trucks), and not the self driving stuff that is much more up in the air.

Frankly I don't know if Semi will be a good self driving vehicle - we of course have to wait and see - but what I do know now is that it will be the only self driving truck to have all of the features that Autopilot offers when it comes out in the next few years. I don't think traditional truck manufacturers are going to be able to catch up in time, and I chalk that up to Tesla having the capacity to gather experience on the roads when no one else can (see my other post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26839891)

I hope this helped explained my thought process more. For what it's worth, I do have a positive outlook on Tesla, I do think they make the best car for a person like me (young software developer, not really materialistic), and I hope to be able to afford one some day. But, I don't think it has to stay that way. I feel this way about Tesla specifically because I'm just not seeing other automakers invest in the areas I care about: green energy, infotainment and automation. This is probably because I drive a gass guzzler SUV with no center console and no computerized safety features except for ABS and traction control. Other people who value other things will of course like other cars.