Tesla Talk 2

unkel

BTW FSD 14 (still beta and still supervised) is expected to be launched in a month or so. Some say the version after that, FSD 15, should be many times better than humans - a claim that is useless and meaningless unless it can somehow been objectively tested and proven or disproven. Looking forward to that.

sk8board

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123757050#Comment_123757050

what does ‘better than humans’ really mean though, in a purely software based scientific solution … any regulated level 3 system surely needs to be many times better than that.

These things need to be nigh on perfect - and remember the bar is very high, as manufacturers will assume insurance liability for their level 3 capable cars.

How close are Tesla to covering the liability of a HW4-capable highland (the answer is never).

josip

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123757677#Comment_123757677

Ah lads, we can try to dismiss the looming future of self-driving cars all we want, but it's inevitable. Only a matter of when not if. Might be Tesla, might be Waymo, might be someone else. But your point about insurance got me thinking. If manufacturers will cover liability, will there be a need for the motor insurance industry? Will the likes of Musk become defacto insurers. The same way VW went into finance and set up their own bank?

unkel

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123757784#Comment_123757784

Yep by definition a level 5 FSD car is the responsibility of the manufacturer. They will be the one paying for insurance. Presumably you pay them a subscription for it.

unkel

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123757677#Comment_123757677

Another logic error you and others keep making. These things do not need to be nigh on perfect. They will never be nigh on perfect (depending on how you define it). It is only required they are demonstrably safer than humans

Your other logic error is that Waymo still make mistakes, thus lidar + radar + video and all the other stuff is not enough, thus we need more tech 😂

maidhc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123757812#Comment_123757812

Safer than what human in what situation? A professional driver with a dose of caffeine or the average driver than demolishes your offside wing in the Tesco car park?

josip

Safer than the average human. Insurance companies and the road safety people would have a fairly good idea of the average stats.

JOL1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123757677#Comment_123757677

Am curious of the basis for concluding that Manufacturers have/will have responsibility for all Insurance liabilities for FSD enabled cars (whenever available). Given that this is a new area without precedent the basis for apportioning liability between, driver, manufacturer surely has yet to be worked out and most likely will be heavily debated between the parties (Drivers/car owners, Car manufacturers, Regulators)?

zg3409

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123757968#Comment_123757968

If it's hands off only driving, all it really requires from an insurance perspective is that it is not too expensive. If say private car insurance is 500 euro per year, taxi insurance 2500 per year, even auto unmanned taxi insurance of 10,000 euro per year makes financial sense if the driver can be eliminated and Tesla/Waymo can have a fleet of 1000 taxis in Dublin 24/7/365.

If you consider truck driving say across Europe a truck costing 1,000,000 euro with insurance of 50,000 euro per year probably still works out cheaper than a human. They say trucks on main motorways say city depot to city depot say red cow to outskirts of Cork will be first, and trucking companies will jump on them if monthly cost is less.

Regulators may be very cautious, especially if deaths are occuring from say a shine on the road, a bent speed limit sign, crashes on roadworks or with fire engines etc. If the USA president was backing them 100% then rules could be ignored or changed.

josip

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123757968#Comment_123757968

The regulatory approach is one option. However the insurance companies are private, profit making entities. If a self-driving manufacturer though that they had an edge on safety over their competitors, they'd be mad not to spawn off an insurance division, offering insurance for their owners lower than they can get on average from the open market. Same as VW bank.

ELM327

Debating the when not if of full level 5 is like debating fiber broadband in the 1950s. Yes it will happen but most having the debate will be dead anyway so it's irrelevant

JOL1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123758241#Comment_123758241

All valid comments but what I was curious about is whether there is a valid basis for concluding with certainty that hte liablity for Insurance with Level 3 and above rests with the car manufacturer. I believe this is an open issue that has yet to be resolved or formulated.

Cyrus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123757935#Comment_123757935

exactly jesus its not that difficult a concept to grasp, if full self driving can be proven to be statistically safer than humans then its the beginning of the end for owner operated motor vehicles.

Cyrus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123757784#Comment_123757784

again completely agree, when not if.

josip

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123758299#Comment_123758299

Bet you €100 it will happen in our lifetimes. Actually make that €1000 😀

MJohnston

It'd be nice if the self-driving chat could be split off into a separate thread, because in here it feels like anytime someone points out the flaws in it as a general technology, every Tesla fan feels the need to get defensive because it's the Tesla thread.

Mr Q

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123758315#Comment_123758315

Mercedes have an actual level 3 system available for a few years now. They take responsibility if the car has an accident when it is engaged.

Cyrus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123758557#Comment_123758557

You dont have to be a tesla fan to believe in self driving as a concept surely? Id be defensive about it whether i owned a tesla or not, i felt the same about it 2 months ago when i was driving an audi.

Cyrus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123758564#Comment_123758564

they do but its pretty sandboxed at the moment i believe? Altho the below is from a year ago so some of this may have moved on.

Drive Pilot, which requires a $2,500 per year subscription, can be only activated in certain situations and areas, including during the daytime when the weather is clear, in heavy traffic jams, on specific California and Nevada freeways, and when the car is traveling less than 40 mph. It doesn't work on roads that haven't been preapproved by Mercedes and cannot be used in construction zones.

Mr Q

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123758648#Comment_123758648

No doubt it is in limited areas where it will work correctly, but Mercedes are liable if anything happens. So they have a level 3 system that you can buy today in some countries and I think it shows the manufactures will take liability for L3 and up.

95 km/h it will work up to in Germany.

unkel

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123758564#Comment_123758564

Exactly. If and when the car has taken over, the car manufacturer is responsible. Whether this is in a strictly geofenced bit of Autobahn at max 60km/h only for a few minutes like in a current Mercedes with level 3, or in any fully automated, no steering wheel, level 5 car

unkel

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123758557#Comment_123758557

It feels like people who don't believe fully self driving will ever be a thing, seem to think people who oppose this view are Tesla fans?

BTW I tried before and started a thread about level 5 autonomous driving and the path there to (which is inevitable in my view, no matter who gets there first), but it didn't really take off

maidhc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123758874#Comment_123758874

The car will still need to be insured by an insurer under the current Road Traffic Acts anyway. We then have the in inevitable blame game between the representatives of the autonomous vehicle and the owner and the driver.

It has often crossed my mind that there is going to be a point soon when we will be naming car manufacturers as defendants in motor traffic claims; I almost did it earlier this month for the first time when it was disclosed the automatic braking appears to have malfunctioned at the wrong time in a car, but ultimately didn’t as nothing could detract from the fact the driver failed to stop anyway.

josip

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123758996#Comment_123758996

"We then have the in inevitable blame game between the representatives of the autonomous vehicle and the owner and the driver."

With autonomous driving vehicles, there is so much more data and evidence about what happened that it will be easier to attribute responsibility and legal costs will be considerably less. Those legal costs and insurance margins all add to the business case for vehicle manufacturers. Think of all that insurance revenue and expenditure on legal costs. That's potential 'up-sell' for the manufacturers.

MJohnston

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123758629#Comment_123758629

It's not about belief, it's hard to argue that the technology will get to a point where something can be presented as self-driving.

It's more about the pragmatic reality - the technology barrier is miniscule compared to the regularity barrier that L5 self-driving will face, especially in Europe. Maybe in the regulatory Wild West of the US they'll see something happen in the next 20 years.

maidhc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123759068#Comment_123759068

legal costs are very much the thin end of the wedge. The upsell is less accidents, the issue though is not simple, e.g. if there is a deficit in maintenance, road issues, appropriateness of letting the machine do its thing (eg in icy conditions).

wassie

Seems we've all been helping Google train Waymo for free

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxNmPck54P0

sk8board

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123759863#Comment_123759863

will they do it ‘better than humans’ though 😏

MJohnston

A thing I always think about in regards to full automation is there's a vandalised speed limit sign I pass regularly (in the north) where someone has changed the 30mph sign to an 80, and the camera recognition on my car constantly picks it up as 80.

I had to change the auto-speed-adjust to require confirmation because the car would be rocketing up to 80 otherwise.

sk8board

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123758880#Comment_123758880

there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that level 5 autonomy will happen - it’s actually reasonably simple - have every vehicle on the road be aware of all other vehicles around them, and they will communicate and flow around each other to their respective destinations. Done, right? (it’s massively more complex, but you get the idea).

However, getting there requires new autonomous vehicles to interact with the old current fleet of vehicles, roads, weather and geography.

To use that overused metaphor - it’s swapping the engines on an airplane while it’s in flight - that’s what makes it so complex.