[bjarneh]

> showing a low-speed, closed-course theme park ride in order to build confidence around Tesla’s progress toward actual real-world driverless capability is almost too childish to call a fraud

This guy has lost confidence in Musk's promises.

I never really understood how Musk can claim to be so close to full autonomy when these cars clearly struggle with basic things using the exact same system that supposedly drives by itself. Automatic high/low beam or detecting rain does not work very well. You wold think that a system that cannot detect oncoming traffic (high/low beam), or actual rain has some other problems when it comes to self-driving.

[ZeroGravitas]

There's a Munro Live video from the event on YouTube where the host is talking enthusiastically about how the Optimus robots are going to take over all dirty and dangerous jobs and the whole time he's talking the video is showing a robot at the event failing miserably at picking up a small bag of chocolates.

The bag has clearly been designed to be easy to pick up, it's positioned on a custom made table top to perfectly space them out and make it easy and still the robot manages to lift two of them by mistake and topple a whole line of them with one ending up on the floor.

[nabla9]

Optimus robots were remotely controlled by humans at the "We, Robot" event during Cybercab. They are not ready even for demo purposes.

It was clever trick because many attendees did not even think the possibility hose were teleoperated interactions because Musk did not bring it up. Some investment firms were clearly not amused by it.

[krick]

It seemed pretty obvious to me. Yet, I was pretty impressed nonetheless, I mean, the sheer dexterity of movement of these things with a human-hand anatomy surprised me, I don't think I've seen it before, and didn't know carnival toys are at this level yet. Is it a commonplace technology? It seems like it must have some practical uses, to be able to operate an almost-human body remotely like that. But, as I've just said, I don't think I ever saw this, only clunky specialized robots with poor movement control. And Boston dynamics pre-programmed toys.

[bjarneh]

> is showing a robot at the event failing miserably at picking up a small bag of chocolates

Luckily that's not one of the dirty or dangerous jobs it will soon take over :-)

[blitzar]

I for one can not wait till I no longer have to engage in the dangerous activity of picking up small bags of chocolates.

[bjarneh]

You're preaching to the choire

[jnsaff2]

On the cars with matrix-led's the high-low has been solved very well. It used to be bad and now it's almost perfect.

Wipers, dunno, they used to be really bad but I have not noticed the issue in the past few months, maybe they have done something.

That said, I am still agreeing with you on "struggle with basic things", there are phantom breakings in the exact same spots this and other teslas have driven thousands of times. There are occasional cases where it would follow the wrong road-markings into a crash would I not intervene and so forth.

[bjarneh]

> with matrix-led's the high-low has been solved very well. It used to be bad and now it's almost perfect.

Yes, it works much better on my new Model Y (2024) than my old Model S (2014). But they didn't really solve the original problem, i.e. detecting oncoming traffic vs. street (or other lights) up ahead. The matrix led's darken these areas in any case, and neither street lights or oncoming cars complain of course. But it does not fill me with much confidence.

> Wipers, dunno, they used to be really bad but I have not noticed the issue in the past few months, maybe they have done something.

Then that software update has not come to Norway at least, here they still start wiping in dry conditions, and fail to detect actual rain; so they need to be manually started all the time.

> there are phantom breakings in the exact same spots this and other teslas have driven thousands of times.

Isn't this the problem with AI though? We've taken something we don't fully understand (neural networks) and applied them. We can give them a lot of training data to the point where they seem to be able to do stuff on their own. But when they fail, we really cannot do anything besides adding new nodes to our network and add more training data, and hope for the best. We cannot really say what went wrong, and fix it.

[natch]

>they still start wiping in dry conditions

That's for safety if a flake of dirt or dust lands on the front window right over where one of the cameras are, it will do a wipe and try to get rid of the thing that is distorting the image. Or it will do it if you are driving straight into the sun sometimes, presumably because it's doing a best efforts action in case the visibility problem is further exacerbated by dust which can be cleared.

It's strange to me that actual helpful features are misinterpreted as flaws, but that's how it is with new technology I guess.

Failing to detect actual rain, yes I see that too a little sometimes. I think they should augment with audio detection. There is a microphone, obviously, for the speech button, and depending on how things are wired sometimes speaker cones can also be repurposed as microphones.

[bathtub365]

Automatic wipers are not new technology and their implementation on cars that use actual rain sensors is much better than Tesla’s.

[bjarneh]

> That's for safety if a flake of dirt or dust lands on the front window right over where one of the cameras are, it will do a wipe and try to get rid of the thing

Not that dry conditions. I live in Trondheim, where it rains/snows well over 200 days a year, so it's not wiping off some dry dust of the camera area. It just starts wiping the clean window in perfectly fine weather. At other times it rains quite a bit and it does not come on.

The software update to soft click the left stalk to engage the wiper menu via the left steering wheel roller is a nice quick fix for these situations, so they are doing something.

[natch]

I was not saying that there absolutely is always dust there. I was saying the system is doing a best efforts action just in case there is dust or snow or other debris there which there sometimes is. I'm guessing they have birds in Trondheim.

I haven't tried the roller for the wiper menu, thanks for the reminder. Less rain around here.

[bjarneh]

> I was saying the system is doing a best efforts action just in case there is dust or snow or other debris there which there sometimes is

I guess that could be the case; but they do seem quite random.

> I'm guessing they have birds in Trondheim.

We do, mostly seagulls where I park my car :-) But you're not dry wiping away anything they produce, that takes a good scrubbing.

> I haven't tried the roller for the wiper

It makes the experience fully controllable from the steering wheel using one hand, which is very good. One light press on the left stalk, and the menu pops up down on the left corner on the screen where you can roll to your preferred setting. I hate having to go into menus on the touch screen while driving.

https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/modely/en_us/GUID-A5C33F3...

[illwrks]

Honest question, considering I have never driven or been in a Tesla, when you say “it would follow the wrong road markings into a crash would I not intervene”, are you not concerned for your safety when driving it.

[LUmBULtERA]

As an owner of a Model Y -- I'm aware that its current implementation of FSD would do this. I don't pay for FSD, so it does not do it. Also, this is a bit like someone turning on cruise control and then just letting the car go off the road at a turn. Would you be too concerned for your safety to own a car with cruise control? No, you'd just either not use cruise control, or understand its limitations when using cruise control and steer as needed.

[dustyventure]

That only seems cosmetically similar to me. If cruise control would usually do the same thing but occasionally try to take a curve for me, I would consider it unreliable. Even if it always got the curve attempts it made correct, it is unreliable if its actions are not essentially a mechanical response.

[consteval]

Right, this is the difference between most car functions and then something like FSD. Reliability. Cruise Control always works the exact same, where the car will break/accelerate exactly as much as it needs to, to maintain the speed it is set to go. Same thing with ABS, where the brakes will be perfectly pulsated when heavy braking. Or differentials. Or pretty much any car system.

FSD is a little too wild west. I also lump ACC and LKAS in here, too. Phantom brake and bad directional input exist for those way too often.

[LUmBULtERA]

But it’s a function you can choose not to use. My Model Y doesn’t even have FSD, I didn’t buy it. I could buy and use it, but I don’t. It doesn’t concern me that it exists, the Model Y has been an awesome car. If I did buy and use it, its limitations are widely known and I’d expect to supervise it if I used it.

[illwrks]

Great explainer, thank you.

[benfortuna]

Agreed. Just sounds like a stressful experience all round.

[jnsaff2]

I never paid for any of the autonomous upsells, so for me this is a lane-keeping functionality and I treat it as such, meaning it helps me but I am still fully responsible for my own safety.

It happens rarely enough, and as I mostly drive on the same roads, I know where it happens as well, usually I disconnect the thing before it gets to the problematic place.

So no, it's so much stressful as annoying. But it does remind me that the claims of self-driving is just horse-shit.

[zesterer]

I'm struggling to see how you can be so calm about what you just said. To me, the idea of a system that works 99% of the time and doesn't work 1% of the time is utterly terrifying, far more so than a system that works only 50% of the time. 1% is small enough for a human operator to become complacent, but still many orders of magnitude greater than an acceptable risk factor. It seems like exactly the sweet spot that's going to maximise loss of life.

[jnsaff2]

I guess this is about predictability.

I know what (and where) the problematic spots are for the lane-keeping, so I use it in situations where the benefit is large and the risk is manageable.

There are many places where I won't switch it on and just drive myself.

Also 99% vs 1% depends on how you look at it. The main road I drive is about 200km long, in one direction it does not have any problematic spots. In the other it has 2 lets say 10 meter spots. By distance it's 0.01% problematic. It's not like Desert Bus where it tries to get you all the time.

[crustycoder]

You do realise that matrix LEDs and auto wipers are bog standard auto tech that other manufacturers have been providing for years?

Audi first offered matrix LED headlights in 2013, so it's only taken Tesla a decade to catch up.

[jnsaff2]

> You do realise

Yes. Not only that, my car had the matrix led hardware for 2 years before the matrix feature was enabled in a software update. TBF, I was never sold matrix leds so there was no marketing let down.

Also the auto-wipers on my 2003 Saab were working better than the Tesla ones of the current generation.

That said, it's also funny to think that the only things I could complain about owning a Tesla are: wipers, self-driving marketing and Elon being a nutcase.

Before the last one is solved, I would not buy another one, but other than that it's a very good car.

[grecy]

> Not only that, my car had the matrix led hardware for 2 years before the matrix feature was enabled in a software update

I read That was a NHSTA thing. Tesla weren’t allowed to enable them in North America despite having them in Europe.

The US regulations often lag Europe by a long way.

[jnsaff2]

This car is in EU.

[vardump]

Tesla should have R&D in Europe as well. Then they probably would have gotten matrix lights right earlier.

[natch]

Even Musk has lost confidence in Musk's predictions. He jokes about this. Tough crowd out there though, you being a case in point.

It's normal as a human to make predictions, and it's normal to come to the realization that some of one's predictions have been incorrect on the timelines. This is all just normal real life in the world of technology.

What actually is remarkable is the unstoppable progress that is being made. You can find counter examples, but look at the newer software versions this month, next month, and so on. Things are being fixed bit by bit.

[shepherdjerred]

At some point a reasonable person would realize that their past predictions have not panned out and would make their future predictions more conservative.

[natch]

Reasonable... lol. If he was reasonable his list of accomplishments would look more like mine... (sad face).

[raincole]

After skimming through the other articles on this blog, I think "this guy" just has some weird obssession with Elon Musk.

[bjarneh]

> I think "this guy" just has some weird obssession with Elon Musk.

It seem the whole planet has this obsession :-)