Every Tesla equipped with the company’s Autopilot self-driving system is being recalled because of a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) inquiry into crashes associated with its use.
“Autopilot” italicized to emphasis that it’s not a defect – as inferred by NHTSA. It’s exactly as designed.
And as marketed.
What does the term “Autopilot” mean? What, more precisely, do most people take it to mean? Obviously, it is taken to mean the same thing it means in aviation, which is where the term first came into currency. When Autopilot is engaged, the aircraft pilots itself. The pilot is supposed to be monitoring, of course. But that is in aviation – where the pilot is required by law as well as common sense to be monitoring.
As opposed to napping.
It’s still illegal to nap while driving but it’s self-evident that Tesla’s Autopilot system encourages it – and drivers do it because they aren’t pilots. The latter are trained to rigorous standards that largely wash out the incompetent as well as the irresponsible. In contrast, almost literally anyone can obtain a driver’s license, which is more accurately a government-issued ID. Possession of the latter is proof of who you are; not that you are a competent, responsible driver.
Telsa buyers are literally told the car is capable of driving itself. It has Autopilot. They are also told – in fine print – that they are always responsible for the safe operation of the vehicle and that the driver must always be paying attention and always-ready to assume control of the car when Autopilot is engaged.
This is both paradoxical and disingenuous.
If the car is capable of driving itself, then why would the driver need to be always-ready to assume control of the vehicle? If it isn’t, then why tell people it’s self-driving? Put another way: Either the car is capable of self-driving or the driver is responsible for driving it.
You cannot have it both ways.
But that is precisely the way Tesla likes it. Being able to market Autopilot makes Teslas seem more capable than cars that lack it. People are deliberately encouraged to believe that if they buy a Tesla, they will own a self-driving car. They have been encouraged, arguably, to act on this belief – and many have. A number have died – because they decided to take a nap or look something up on their phones and didn’t notice that their Tesla was Autopiloting itself into a bridge abutment or a car parked on the shoulder of the road.
But don’t blame Tesla! Says Tesla. It says right there (read the fine print) that the driver must always be ready to intervene. If he isn’t, then it’s all his fault.
Right. Would this fly if someone were selling cigarettes to 10-year-olds but with a label warning them that smoking is dangerous?
So, what’s the “fix”?
Well, it will likely be the same as the one already in use in other-brand vehicles that have similar “hands free” self-driving technology. Sensors built into the steering wheel can tell if the driver has let go of it and if, after a few seconds, he hasn’t put his hands back on the wheel, the system disengages the “hands-free” self-driving technology – thereby forcing him to drive the car.
Thereby defeating the point of this technology.
What good is “self-driving” technology if you must be ready to drive the car at all times? If you can’t take a nap while the car drives? Arguably, it is very bad – and not just because it’s as silly as having a tool you can’t use – such as a hammer that (read the fine print) must never be used to drive nails into a board.
Self-driving technology encourages drivers not to – by encouraging them to rely on technology that depends on inattentive/distracted drivers to “intervene” when the system glitches or is about to pile-drive the car into a bridge abutment. But such a driver – the term is used loosely – is already not paying much attention, by definition. And it will likely take him a potentially decisive moment longer to recognize there’s a problem and react to it than a driver who had his hands on the wheels at all times as well as his eyes on the road.
But which time it may well already be too late.
Whatever happened to saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaafety first?
Looks like it comes last – when we’re talking ’bout Tesla. Because Tesla is the tip of the spear of the “electrification” agenda – and for that reason, the federal regulatory apparat turns a blind eye toward Tesla’s dangerous and disingenuous marketing of “self-driving” technology that isn’t, really.
To truly appreciate the duplicity and disingenuousness of the apparat, consider its response to (just one example of many) the infamous catalytic converter test pipe. These were sold – briefly – at auto parts stores. Not to “test” a catalytic converter but to replace it – with a hollow pipe that fit exactly in place of the cat.
It didn’t fly.
How about the way Ford was handled when a tiny handful out of millions of Pintos sold caught fire when struck from behind? As opposed to the handling of the much greater built-in fire-hazard of devices powered by enormous lithium-ion batteries that can erupt in flames when they’re parked?
Never mind.
. . .
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Wasn’t Chrysler’s cruise control called “Auto-Pilot?”
I wonder how many folks won’t return their Teslas to the dealer for installation of the steering wheel sensors. Will Elon turn their cars off?
GMC calls it hands free driving:
https://www.gmc.com/connectivity-technology/super-cruise
Let’s not forget the “Vietnam war protesters” who were all for “free speech” on college campuses “back in the day” but now are attempting to stifle honest and protected dissent against the zionist jew bastard butchers who are destroying (genociding) innocent human beings in Gaza. The same goes for Ukraine which is poised to become israel 2.0.
I’ve been working on self driving tech for quite a few years now, and I’m quite familiar with Tesla’s autopilot behavior.
Before I rip into Tesla, you need to know that working on anything related to cars immediately drags in the US, EU and Chinese regulatory agencies, and they all disagree with each other, and except for China, they’re all anti-progress. This forces people to move very slowly.
Self driving technology is categorized by levels of capability, but Tesla markets its Autopilot as an L2 system. L2 is basically cruise control. They did it this way to shortcut the regulators, because their system, which is in fact a flawed L3 system, would have been impossible to ship at all had they categorized it honestly. The system has sensors on the steering wheel to make sure you’re touching it every few seconds, but people have tricked it by sticking water bottles into the steering wheel or buying little devices which confuse the sensors into thinking you’re holding the wheel, because that Tesla system is capable of fully driving the car safely most of the time.
Mercedes is taking a different approach in their recent announcement. Their system is an L3 system, which is legally liable for crashes during the time it’s driving. It will refuse to drive if the conditions aren’t perfect, though. Self driving that works anywhere and anytime is future tech (and classified as L4 and L5).
All the mechanical stuff around self driving, like steering the wheels, or pushing the brakes, is easy. The hard part is programming a computer to perceive the world. We have cameras hooked into machine learning which attempt to perceive the world visually, and we have sensors, like lidar and radar which directly measure the world.
Video based perception has to turn a stream of pictures into distances, and understanding of objects (car, pedestrian, curb, etc). This is fiendishly difficult, because state of the art machine learning works by showing the car trillions of images, and in each image, labeling the important things for the car to learn to recognize, but trillions of images isn’t enough to cover every possible case. Tesla had a notable glitch where it couldn’t understand that a truck carrying traffic lights wasn’t actually a traffic light. Nobody had ever taught to train it on that. And that’s the problem, we can’t foresee every possible scenario to train a machine learning system. A future system that works well will have to understand the world somehow, but we don’t know how to do that, as an industry.
Video gets you maybe 90% of the way to proper perception, and this is where the additional sensors like lidar come in. When you can’t trust the video entirely, you measure distances to everything around you directly. Lidar shoots a grid of points into the world, which humans can’t see, but the IR camera can, and based on some physics magic, it measures the distance and relative speed of each of those points. So, the guess work about distance and speed is removed. Lidar can’t identify objects, all it does is give you a few thousand points and you know how close they are and their relative difference in speed to yours.
Elon likes to simplify, but he’s no expert and he has to listen to his engineers. Machine learning and perception engineers, for a while, were a delusional bunch who thought the problem was solved, because in the world of software, 99% accuracy is great, but in the world of automotive safety, 1% failure rate is not acceptable, and they came from the software world. I think Elon believed them, that perception is working great, so why bother putting ugly lidar sensors on a car? Then, marketing, which is weaponized, professional lying, took over. I don’t think Elon is capable of eating crow and admitting the irrational exuberance, and it’ll create massive lawsuits.
Excellent summation. I knew most of this just from my own reading and since I’m driving one of their vehicles but its nice to hear it put together succinctly.
Remember way back when in BC (before covid) when they were testing 100% self-driving cars in Phoenix? Everything was going swimmingly until some man/woman/thing was sitting in the back seat gaming or social mediaing, or something and bam, wham, thank you maam! the car slams into someone crossing the street killing the pedestrian?
Nobody remembers that? That killed the self-driving testing immediately. I have never heard about 100% self-driving cars again. Sitting in the back seat while being chauffeured by the car is dead. Sitting in the front seat while being chauffeured by the car is also dead.
Off topic, but do you guys remember the massive efforts to blame the increasingly obvious failure of the COVID “vaccines” on people who refused to be guinea pigs for Big Pharma? It was an intentional propaganda campaign from who else? The WEF sociopaths….
https://www.igor-chudov.com/p/the-unvaccinated-were-unfairly-scapegoated
Good morning, John –
Yes, I remember. The “unvaccinated” are our misfortune – to crib a phrase. We were “selfish” and “reckless” with other people’s lives because we refused to take the drugs being pushed on us. I will never forget this. Nor forgive it.
Hi Eric,
And then there’s this. Deborah Birx, who was on Orange Man’s Coronavirus Task Force in 2020, said in an interview after leaving that she knew the “vaccines” wouldn’t prevent infection. Nevertheless, the government & establishment media ran a HEAVY propaganda campaign claiming that people who got vaxxed wouldn’t get the dreaded ‘Rona.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/biden-fauci-and-democrats-owe-the-country-an-apology-after-dr-birxs-revelations
Indeed Eric,
Never forget for sure, and forgiving requires confession first, which we will never hear from these evil bastards.
I’ve been a few recent-model German case that have the adaptive cruise control, by various names, that also claims to handle stop-and-go to include coming to a full stop at a stop light behind other cars.
GOOD THING that I didn’t (and don’t) ever trust it. I tried it out to see how well it functions. Holy shit, if I hadn’t intervened, I would have sailed into the rear end of a stopped car at a quite dangerous speed! (i.e., no fender bender, I’m talking major slam.)
Given the way dummies seem to trust it (rings a bell, huh, “trust the science”), I’m very surprised that there hasn’t been lots of accidents just like that.
[…] Guest Post by Eric Peters […]
OT but buckle up…
Fed holds rates steady, indicates three cuts coming in 2024
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/13/fed-interest-rate-decision-december-2023.html
From link:
Along with the decision to stay on hold, committee members penciled in at least three rate cuts in 2024, assuming quarter percentage point increments. That’s less than market pricing of four, but more aggressive than what officials had previously indicated.
—-
Paging Yukon Jack.
Did you happen to notice the creepy reason for the recall?
“federal regulators found that it failed to adequately detect if the driver was paying attention while the system was engaged.”
The car was not Qrwellian enough for the “federal regulators.” And for God’s sake, what’s the point of autopilot if you have pay attention? You might as well just stick your index finger on the wheel and just drive the damn car. How difficult is that, really? This clearly has nothing to do with autopilot and everything to do with a pretext for spying on the occupants of the car.
“Orwellian”
Indeed,Mister –
I ought to have dug into that some. The gist is that the cars allowed people to take their hand off the wheel (and their eyes off the road). The solution? Finer monitoring of the driver. This is of a piece with the “impaired” driver tech they’re going to enable come 2026. (It’s already in most new cars.)
Good times.
What about that GMC ad where the driver and passengers were doing a hand-clap song, obviously off the wheel?
But how ’bout that 6-position tailgate on the Sierra, huh…huh?!
This is a complex topic and I’d like to contribute some actual facts as unbiased as I’m able since there are definitely EV haters and EV fanatics just like politics. It is a highly divisive topic with few people left in the middle. I find myself like this politically as well when both sides are pulled WAY out to the margins. This website leans heavily toward EV haters so I expect to receive the same reaction as I would going onto CNN or FoxNews and trying to take a libertarian centrist viewpoint.
#1 Issue- the headline is sensationalist in nature. “Recall” puts an image of Teslas being driven (or towed) back to a dealership for some type of overhaul. This is not the case here. This is an Over the Air (OTA) update. Tesla’s receive them on about a quarterly basis. This is the blessing & the curse of the “car as device”.
Just as easily as something can be fixed with minimal hassle, things can be broken or taken away with the same minimal hassle. This “recall” will fall more into the latter category. What is happening here is that the couple of retards that decided to trust Tesla implicitly have ruined it for the rest of us. These are more than likely the “trust the science” crowd who put full faith in ‘experts’. Now because some people decided to in some cases literally fall asleep behind the wheel everyone suffers. The cars nagging about “hands on wheel” will increase massively and the ability of autopilot to be used anywhere except on a multi lane highway basically just disappeared.
I’ve used all 3 versions of Tesla’s autopilot for approximately 2000 miles worth of driving. Here is what I have found–
Elon is full of shit. No big surprise there. What was promised back in 2017/2018 is not even -close- to the reality of “Full Self Driving”. Full Self Driving is anything but, in fact. It requires FAR more attention than normal driving, which to Eric’s point above then becomes… why bother? If I have to be doubly as alert to make sure the car doesn’t crash itself then you’ve utterly defeated the purpose of the feature.
I use FSD as a party trick mainly to wow people who have never sat in a Tesla. And at first glance, it –is– impressive. Watching a car drive itself through a neighborhood. Stopping at stop signs, making turns without someone touching the steering wheel, accelerating, braking, changing lanes, getting on the highway, etc. is amazing.
But it is an illusion. And a dangerous one at that. First off, most Teslas are currently equipped with HW3 (Hardware 3). This is the combination of the processor, circuitry, sensors, memory, etc. that make up the Autonomous Driving System. The hard cold reality is, HW3 is wholly inadequate for FSD. It simply isn’t powerful enough to do what it was promised to do. Enter Hardware 4 (HW4) which the newer cars have. Massively upgraded sensors, CPU, memory, etc. This hardware -is- capable of Full Self Driving, but the software is NOT. So once again, it simply doesn’t work.
In my estimation it will take several years at the current pace before anything even remotely resembling FSD becomes a reality. The car simply does absurdly stupid things and you feel like you are riding with a very skittish and overly cautious teenager. The kind that is SO cautious that in trying to prevent accidents, they would actually -cause- more accidents by not understanding how traffic flow works.
That is why I said, FSD is a party trick right now and not much more. This brings us to Autopilot. The standard version and “Enhanced” Autopilot.
It is here where I will break ranks with the EV haters. This system works surprisingly well. Like, very well most of the time. The problem is when it doesn’t work well, it
–really– doesn’t work and when you are going 70 mph that can be something between alarming, dangerous, or fatal given the circumstances.
Autopilot is standard lane keep assist and speed matching. This system is 95% solid because it is very old, the first thing Tesla ever did 10 years ago so it shows the signs of a well developed mature system. ‘Enhanced’ autopilot builds on this and mostly works well but there is logic that will let the car change lanes for you too. Once again, does so in a somewhat granny / teeny overly cautious manner but by & large gets the job done.
The annoying part of this “recall” is that those are the systems they are primarily dropping a hammer on because a few jackasses abused them badly. And in some cases they did not work and like I said above you need to understand WHAT to do when they do not work. The average sheeple that just clicks on Autopilot and has no earthly idea what to do in the few seconds you have to correct a serious error will assuredly crash and/or be injured. So the thing has been ruined for the rest of us.
To give you some context however- I did nearly 2000 miles running Autopilot this year and in nearly every situation it performed flawlessly. It saved me some serious road fatigue by driving hundreds of long empty highway miles across the country. In situations like that, it is phenomenal. In downtown rush hour traffic in Washington DC with pedestrians everywhere? Not so much…
In the same way that you wouldn’t use the autopilot on a plane for landing and take-off but during the ‘boring’ long hours of at altitude flight, nor should you trust autopilot in situations that are chaotic and with many variables. But the combo of Elon’s BS and your typical EV driver lefty being a midwit NPC who believes anything makes for some bad juju when combined.
Now I am probably about to lose part of the primary functionality of why I even bothered getting this toy in the first place. This is the very negative side of “car as a device” as I’m being punished for the stupidity of others. This will become more & more frequent in the future as these cars all become more & more centrally controlled.
The “autopilot” feature is a typical example of Tesla’s modus operandi, which is to neglect the basics, while going all-in on gimmicks.
If Tesla were serious about making EVs viable in a working auto market, it should have spent all its resources on finding a fix for the charging time and range problems that its EVs have been plagued with from the very beginning. Instead it’s wasting time and resources on gimmicks such as “autopilot” (!).
Remember, in 2023 it’s 20 years since Tesla was founded, and yet after all those years, Tesla remains a technology laggard that hasn’t even managed to develop the technology with the performance parity of a primitive pump and tank (!). Come to think of it, maybe that is why Tesla is such in dire need of gimmicks such as “autopilot”, to distract from the fact that Tesla really doesn’t have a raison d’être, and that its attempt at resurrecting the EV only serves to illustrate why the EV once ended up on the scrap heap of history, where it still belongs a century later…
Hi Stufo –
I think you’re right. Tech such as Autopilot (and “ludicrous” speed) are a big part of what makes Teslas appealing to those who buy them. The “EV” thing is secondary (or tertiary) which I think I can prove by stating that if Teslas were no quicker than ordinary cars and didn’t have “tech” fewer would buy them.
Which brings up something: When “ludicrous” speed is effectively banned by the kill switch tech, what will be the point in owning a car like a Tesla?
Not to mention that a lot of Tesla’s gimmicks, like “autopilot”, could potentially be “backported” (so to speak) to real cars – there’s no reason why a self-driving car couldn’t have an internal combustion engine, for example. After all, jet planes have autopilot, but are not battery-powered.
It is funny you mention this because I have often pondered this myself. If Tesla and Elon were smart (they are not) they would be licensing AP tech out and making boatloads of cash just on that as in many ways it is far more advanced than its competitors due to maturity.
In fact, you are pretty much on target in general w/ this comment. I am not an EV fanatic as you may have gathered from my original post. If I could find a car as fast as this Tesla w/ some of the advanced Autopilot / Self-drive tech in an ICE platform I’d dump this Tesla tomorrow.
But the reality of this government influenced market with their finger pushing hard on the market is that to get that blistering HP and those advanced AP features costs even more than the already expensive Tesla. You are talking very high end BMWs, Mercedes, etc. that are unobtanium for most people. (Myself included)
I think a lot of the attraction to EVs is the same as the attraction to cell phones. It’s new and different so it must be better. Even if it’s worse.
And more expensive.
Why own dichotomy and paradox ? Same point as owning a $100k mechanical timepiece, 200ft long yacht, 15ksq foot covid box, $20k moped called ebike, fourth vacation cottage, 10th air bnb, third trophy ditz, new citation, all manner of commerce and the souls of men. . .
‘Autopilot is standard lane keep assist and speed matching.’ — Useranon99
Thanks for clarifying this. To me, and probably to many first-time Tesla buyers, ‘autopilot’ and ‘full self-driving’ sound like synonyms. Neither term is accurate.
Tesla’s devious use of words and their connotations is misleading marketing. Not everyone is capable of observing, as you did, that ‘you [should not] trust autopilot in situations that are chaotic and with many variables.’
One is reminded of an apocryphal story from the 1970s. It claimed that a naive Iranian guy (Iran was our friend during the Shah’s rule) from a donkey-cart village set the cruise control to 70 mph on his van — believing this magical American technology to be ‘full self driving’ — then wandered into the back as the van inevitably drifted off the road.
I don’t trust algorithms that I didn’t code myself.
If that’s all it is, then Mercedes has the exact same thing now. It has the ability to keep the car in the lane and maintain *distance* (aka Distronic) and can even change lanes for you. Pretty sure Audi has it as well.
Heck for that matter, I had a 2024 Hyundi (forget the model) rental car that had that same thing too.
I think I saw Cheech and Chong do that in a movie, maybe.
Considering the environment up at 36k ft. Obstacle and traffic density etc. “Autopilot” might fit nicely. At ground zero in traffic congestion of distracted minds maybe not such an easy “coding task”. But then most of us born in Happy Daze mired in Wonder years still just wanna play star track.
Forget about cyber autopilot, you are the autopilot.
Just drive the car, not a difficult thing to do. Whether it is an EV or an evil ICE, take control. Not a hard job.
Unless you have no brain, then don’t drive. Problem solved.
In the same way that you wouldn’t use the autopilot on a plane for landing and take-off but during the ‘boring’ long hours of at altitude flight, nor should you trust autopilot in situations that are chaotic and with many variables.
This is the great failure of marketing these products. If Tesla required owners to go through a training session, even just a corporate HR style slide deck with a quiz, that stressed the importance of maintaining situational awareness and that autopilot has very specific uses and limitations, it would probably be much better than it is. Instead I’m guessing there’s some lawyered up disclaimer/EULA clickthrough that has to be acknowledged before unlocking autopilot, which no one reads, because no one cares.
I have a little Skydio quadcopter drone, with the Enterprise firmware upgrade that enables autonomous scanning and extreme collision avoidance. It was an expensive upgrade and part of the price went to online pilot training. “Wait, you had to be trained on autonomous flight?” Yes, because there are plenty of times when the drone won’t do what you want it to do, still potential for crashes, and still plenty of situations where autonomous flight shouldn’t be attempted. It took a day or so to go through the online training, and I learned a lot about the autonomy system, more about the hardware than I knew before and received a certification document. Could I use the drone without the training? Sure. But would I put the autonomy engine to its best use? No way.
Ever seen a flight school allow one with issues to pass right on thru?
Useranon99: I must correct you on your assertion that “This website leans heavily toward EV haters.”
That’s not the case at all. This website leans heavily toward freedom and liberty. The criticism is not about EVs per se, but about government and rent-seeking grifters forcing EVs upon the public and trying to eliminate non-EVs.
By the way, an entry-level Lexus NX 300 with adaptive cruise control and lane keep assist does virtually the same thing that you describe about your Tesla. I’ve driven one. As long as you touch the steering wheel every 15 seconds or so (and I suspect a potato chip bag clip on it would suffice), it will drive itself on the highway through curves and traffic. This feature is not unique to EVs. In fact being an EVC has nothing at all to do with it.
“being an EV”
Most here already know this, but this is a good read.
https://thenewamerican.com/us/environment/middle-class-subsidizing-rich-ev-owners-true-ev-charging-cost-17-a-gallon/
This looks right to me. As someone who is not in the tank for EVs I have always understood they are in large part a government pork barrel scam. This is due in large part to most of the people behind them being the same scientifically illiterate midwits that also push climate change. When you have dullards and the stupid in charge of policy making EVs and climate change mandates are the net result.
It was comical to me that we had a fellow EV owner appear here a few days ago proclaiming the glory of his Tesla including using HOV lanes, free (read paid for by others) charging, and other typical leftist drivel.
The 50,000 tons of material dug from the earth by child slave laborers and strip mining by diesel fume spewing machines for the rare earth metals to build his SUPER GREEN car never entered his small mind. Odd that…
How to get past those $500 earbuds playing the hi res FLACs. Good luck titties.
Full Measure had a story last year about the “Autopilot” feature in EVs. Of all the crashes that cars with auto pilot were involved in at the time this story aired, Tesla was involved in about 70% of them…..
https://fullmeasure.news/news/shows/unchecked-tech
The meme guy in the posted sleeping at the wheel video, comes from this genre of crappy “Wojak” cartoons produced by Millenials in their mom’s basement.
Use search terms like “Wojak, cryptos, investing, cartoon, wage slave”. The cartoons script is usually, Wojak decides to invest in cryptos to get out of wage slavery, but the market turns down, and loses everything.
This is a good one, Wojak buys an electric car
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBclGyE1H3c
More than two thirds of America believed safe and effective as well. Some still do.
Hi Ken,
Other big lies some people continue to believe are “Most secure election ever”, “January 6th was an insurrection”, “Mask/ vaxx mandates saved lives”, “Lockdowns saved lives”, “Climate change is caused by your neighbor driving a gas vehicle or eating meat”, “Ukraine is winning!”, “Pandemic of the unvaccinated”, “Trump is a modern day Hitler”, “People who disagree with _____ are _____ deniers!”, “Things are better under Joe Biden & he needs to be reelected to stop fascism!”, etc.
My fourth case of covid woulda been much worse without that turd booster. . . .
Many Tesla owners use weights or other devices to defeat the “hands on the wheel” requirement for autopilot to function.
https://www.plugear.com/product/tesla-model-3-y-steering-wheel-counter-weight-autopilot-buddy/
As a commercial pilot to defeat whatever safety devices are built into airliners. My guess is every one of them will say “are you crazy!” even though they might not feel them necessary. Of course in order to do so you’d likely have to get your first officer to agree, and anyone else who might notice you’ve made unauthorized changes.
And despite what some people believe, over 90% of all takeoff and landings are manually flown. The only time autopilots are routinely engaged is at cruise, and there are very strict rules for maintaining distance between other aircraft, and there’s really nothing much else to run into above 600 ft AGL. There’s a well established network of navigation aids like radio beacons, inertial guidance and GPS, Victor Airways and just the fact that there’s no need to follow a twisting, turning highway means programming an autopilot is a trivial matter. And there’s ATC, shuffling everyone around the airspace, telling pilots what to do. And you think a speeding ticket is bad, imagine getting told to call the FSDO after you didn’t follow the instructions of the controller to his satisfaction.
One hand on the throttle control on a Boeing aircraft, the Boeing pilot knows instinctively, through thorough training and education, how the Boeing aircraft was flying normal or not.
My BIL was an employee of Boeing in Seattle, an employee for Boeing Computer Services. Knew how to fly a plane.
At his office, he pointed out a machine that was 30 inches tall or so, 15 inches deep and about 42 inches in length.
“That’s a computer,” he said.
IIRC, the year was 1995.
A busted altitude letter perhaps?
The minds of people who have bought EVs seem to be set on autopilot as well, at least on the topic of EVs. Like obedient, non-thinking parrots, they all repeat the exact same boilerplate, as though the same script had been uploaded to their minds over the air. A discussion with an EV-tard is therefore eerily predictable.
‘Enhanced Autopilot can be added at time of purchase for $6,000, and FSD can be added for $15,000.’ — quote dated July 3, 2023 on Google, possibly from Motor Trend
After Tesla’s OTA update, what some folks paid thousands for is going to be crippled in function, albeit saaaaaaafer.
Will they get a refund, now that Autopilot 2.0 is not what they thought they were buying? Hell no. You don’t get to be the world’s richest lifeform by being a nice guy.
Meanwhile, Tesla is still defiantly flogging costly monthly subscriptions to upgrade ‘Autopilot’ [which comes in two different flavors, Basic and Enhanced] to ‘Full Self Driving.’
https://www.tesla.com/support/full-self-driving-subscriptions
‘Full Self Driving’ does not mean what Tesla wants you to think it means.
Tesla makes P. T Barnum [‘There’s a sucker born every minute’] look like an altruist by comparison. Tesla is just plain slimy.
“Full Self Driving” Ha! What a colossal lie. Read the fine print:
“Note: These features are designed to become more capable over time; however the currently enabled features do not make the vehicle autonomous. The currently enabled features require a fully attentive driver, who has their hands on the wheel and is prepared to take over at any moment.”
What a joke. I can’t believe these cars are allowed to be on the road, as much as it pains me to type the word “allowed”. I quit riding a motorcycle years ago when sail fawns became prevalent. Now with these computer controlled death machines out there, there’s no way.
I think if one of these idiots ever crashes into my classic car and I find out it was on autopilot, I may go to jail for murder.
Not P.T. Barnum, David Hannum.
UAV’s aren’t allowed to fly in national airspace without some sort of sense-and-avoid mechanism (i.e. usually a remote pilot). Why Tesla got a free pass is beyond me.
The biden-thing USG wants Musk’s head on a platter with the same zeal teenage boys want girls. He exposed the government-corporate-fascist censorship complex. SpaceX is on the receiving end of stonewalling from the FAA, the EPA, and now the FCC.
I don’t believe in coincidences. And since I don’t believe in coincidences, I doubt the NHSTA gives the first hoot about the drivers of Teslas & those who have the misfortune of being around them.
I’ll start liking Musk when he puts an internal combustion engine in the next Tesla vehicle.
https://www.tesladeaths.com/
Tesla Deaths Total as of 12/13/2023: 481 | Tesla Autopilot Deaths Count: 42
But, but, but … they saved money with the rebate and on their taxes. LOLROFL
There are alot of ways to die, being holoroasted in your brand new Tesla must be one of the worst, the cab fills up with smoke, the seat belt won’t unlock, the doors won’t open and the heat underneath your ass cooks your lowers until you suffocate.
And no one is ever held accountable. Not a word from Ralph Nader.
I literally will NOT park near one of those Tesla firecrackers.
click on “other totals” on the link above for a good laugh
Do you see know why I am a neo-Luddite?
Not a word. Nader is also pro Vaaax. He’s a stooge. Always has been. Was able to hide it better during the Ribicoff hearings which were a direct attack on the auto industry.
Yep, same for the anti-war Left, not a peep when it was their war in Ukraine. All politics is theater, including the protestors. We are being swamped by anti-gun staged shootings, false flags for war, fake actresses, half of Hollyweird are trannys, have you seen the list?
http://www.frot.co.nz/design/funny/the-full-tranny-suspect-list/
Have you seen MANdonna lately? LOL The fake females don’t age well.
Everything is fake, including cars. Henry Ford produced a Model A that could hit a solid wall at a good speed and bounce off, now the smallest ding results in scrapping the whole car.