[LanceJones]

I'm an FSD Beta user. If you stop reading at "Full Self Driving Capability", then yes, it's an issue for a potential purchaser. But if you read just a little bit more, it becomes more clear what you're buying. I don't feel "fooled" and neither do 1000s of other Beta testers with whom I regularly communicate on Discord.

[figassis]

Don't think this is the point. Calling something Oranges, and then saying "they're not really oranges, but an approximation, but we call them oranges bc it sounds cool" is still fraudulent in my view.

[falseeq]

No that’s not fraud. Fraud requires a lie and justifiable, detrimental reliance on that lie by a victim.

[singleshot_]

Hi, welcome to hacker news.

Why wouldn’t a buyer be justified in relying upon a sellers description of the goods for sale?

[falseeq]

Because the more detailed description of the feature clearly explains what it does and doesn’t do. Say you sign a contract, one section is titled “Seller Assumes Liability for Injury” but then the text of that section lists some circumstances where they don’t. Totally fine and legal.

[singleshot_]

Maybe, if all that is within the four corners of the contract. I don’t think that’s what we are talking about here; our current discussion seems to involve the marketing name of a car feature (full self driving) and the technical functionality that name represents.

With that in mind it seems that you are not thinking about the Rst. 2d Torts 540 duty to investigate rule. I can be justified in relying on something (e.g., your intentionally misleading name for the feature) even if an investigation would have shown the misrepresentation was false. Instead of “totally fine and legal” I would say that this is “a fact-dependent situation.”

Do you believe that selling something called Full Self Driving that actually could not drive itself fully is within the duty of good faith and fair dealing? This sidesteps the issue of the tort of fraudulent misrepresentation and goes right to the heart of the customer confusion a product like a Tesla sows.

[falseeq]

Yes, good faith and fair dealing has nothing to do with this and shows that while you may know enough to pull out the restatement, you don’t really get the law. Good faith has to do with conduct in the execution of an agreement that undermines the deal without seeming to technically violate it. It doesn’t have anything to do with putting caveats in fine print.

[LadyCailin]

It’s closer to

Seller Assumes Liability for Injury†

†Seller Assumes No Liability for Injury

[anigbrowl]

I'm really tired of people just treating words as meaningless attention hooks and then leaning on a unilaterally convenient redefinition of them.

[falseeq]

I’m not totally defending Tesla’s mildly misleading advertising here. I’m saying it’s not fraud and not really comparable to the massive fraud committed by Holmes.

[anigbrowl]

Fair enough. You're correct, I'm jus expressing my antipathy to marketing technique.

[lallysingh]

It's actually really common. Like lemonade with no fruit juice. Or check out "Mayo" fake mayonnaise. It's literally not mayonnaise.

[omnibrain]

That's why in Europe we have laws against this type of false labeling.

[gvedem]

doesn't make it okay though

[ok_dad]

> I'm an FSD Beta user... 1000s of other Beta testers

Ah, so the hundreds of thousands or millions who bought FSD years ago should be happy that a few thousand of you get to test out a system with your own lives. Great.

Edit: Don't bother responding if you're a Tesla or Elon fanboy/fangirl. I'm not interested in being insulted any longer by you folks.

[LanceJones]

There are 400,000+ Beta users currently (US and Canada). You are being fooled by the headlines. The people in the EU have a legitimate beef (not being able to use the functionality). "test a system with our own lives" is silly hyperbole and you know it.

[ok_dad]

> "test a system with our own lives" is silly hyperbole and you know it.

No, I actually believe that, because I have some morals and ethics around introducing dangerous and untested black-box AI into a several-ton machine with no physical consrtaints as to it's location (aka: a moving car), as in I wouldn't do it myself nor use a product like Tesla that was developed in such a shoddy manner.

It's pretty fucking rude to assume you know what's in my head, and I wish I could insult you as hard as you insulted me with that statement, but that would just be tit for tat and HN isn't about that kind of insulting remark.

[LanceJones]

It's ADAS Level 2. Tesla is one of many. And are you equally concerned aboout parents who allow their 15 and 16 year olds to drive on the same streets with no-to-little training... and where the parent cannot easily grab the steering wheel or press the brake?

[ok_dad]

15 and 16 year olds, in many states, are required to drive with a fully-licensed individual until they are 18 or even older! I'm not as worried about a teenage driver, though, because they are humans and we have a lot of experience as humans on how to teach other humans to drive. Not so much with a black-box neural net AI!

[LanceJones]

If I got that wrong, then I apologize.

[ok_dad]

Thanks. In the future, try to be charitable and assume people are telling their true feelings on HN, and not being trolls or dickheads. Most people here are pretty good about that, I find.

[00F_]

so when they introduced drive by wire, and just put it out there on the roads without telling anyone, that was reckless? or any of the countless other designs that have led us to the modern cars we have now? how about all the severe recalls, not over the air recalls that tesla gets press for but real safety issues? GM and the others have tons and tons of real physical safety recalls, way more than tesla, and thats not shoddy to you? thats not reckless to you? thats foolish. fsd as it is now probably drives more safely than a teenager. so do you want to take all teenagers off the road? and where is your crusade against drunk driving which kills way, way more people than fsd ever will every single year. doesnt bother you. no, your issue isnt with safety or with ethics or principles or anything like that. your issue is with elon musk. because you read brain-rot mainstream media all day who use lies and misdirection to paint elon musk and tesla as evil.

[ok_dad]

Well, drive by wire wasn't just put out there, it was tested on military jets for decades and the tech eventually got to cars. There are also testing rigs and failsafes for such designs, however Tesla is just putting a black-box AI on the roads in charge of massive vehicles.

I'm not going to engage with someone like you any longer, though, as you're being really fucking rude.

[00F_]

no, youre not going to engage because you know youre wrong. high volume drive by wire is way different than millions of dollars jet fly by wire systems. and it doesnt matter anyway because it was one of countless systems that were tested on the road. hydraulic brakes. for a long time half the industry wouldnt trust them because it was too out-there. and yes, these systems are developed and tested in house and safety measures are put in place, all true with fsd i should add, but putting them out there on real roads in thousands or millions of vehicles is not something you can ever test for. the simple and plain fact is that when you deploy these kinds of system updates at scale, there is risk. so far, fsd has proven a lot less risky than other systems deployed by other auto manufacturers because there have been many recalls and many deaths associated with systems that did not pass the at-scale test and none of those are fsd related. there are some articles that try to attribute a crash or fatality to a malfunction of fsd but none of them have panned out. its bullshit. and even if they were all true, it would still probably not be the most dangerous system thats been deployed at scale in recent times. but its not true...

ABUSING YOUR FLAGGING PRIVS IS RUDE, DISHONEST AND SHAMEFUL. A PERSON AS OLD AS YOU SHOULD KNOW BETTER

[ceejayoz]

"test a system with our own lives" is actually an understatement; FSD Beta is being tested on other peoples' lives without their consent. Other drivers, pedestrians, etc.

[00F_]

so when you have a student driver, or a new driver, the lives of not just them but the people around them are being risked just to test a system. so we should just stop all new drivers. no more new drivers. because a new driver, especially a teenage one, is orders of magnitude more dangerous than the current fsd.

[ceejayoz]

Student drivers are typically subject to significant limitations - no other kids in car, no driving past certain hours, parental supervision for a certain period of time, etc. They're not learning for a billionaire's profit, and they're fairly unlikely to get a software update that causes a whole bunch of them to make the same mistake in a short period of time.

[00F_]

so where is your proposal to limit the passengers of a self driving car, all of the countless brands who are advertising level 2 systems? where is your proposal for compromise? there are none because nobody who likes pouring cold water on tesla is coming from a place of intellectual honesty.

so self driving cars could only exist for a billionaires profit? how about for the countless lives that will be saved by this technology? tens of thousands of people die every year. cmon dude.

[lawn]

That's true.

You're testing it with the lives of others on the road or walking beside it too.

[LanceJones]

It's ADAS Level 2. Tesla is one of many. And are you equally concerned aboout parents who allow their 15 and 16 year olds to drive on the same streets with no-to-little training... and where the parent cannot easily grab the steering wheel or press the brake?

[giantrobot]

Yeah sometimes it's other peoples' lives.

[SketchySeaBeast]

Hey now, don't forget the lives of everyone else they are in traffic with. That increases the number of beta tested by an order of magnitude if you think about it.

[lesuorac]

Oh good point, I should be more careful of what I read.

It's "Full Self Driving" not "Full Self Driving without Accidents".

[ejb999]

you mean like people?

[lotsofpulp]

It is not about not being fooled, it is about maintaining standards so that people in society can spend less time ensuring they do not get fooled.

[LanceJones]

Valid point.