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.
Bet you €100 it will happen in our lifetimes. Actually make that €1000 😀
again completely agree, when not if.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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)?
Safer than the average human. Insurance companies and the road safety people would have a fairly good idea of the average stats.
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?
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 😂
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.
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?
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).
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.
indeed
And they are running robotaxis for almost 6 years now. Tesla for 2 months.
Totally - the regulators have all the data, so Tesla premise that somehow they’ve figured out a workable camera-only solution will never ever pass muster with the regulators as being a safer system.
It’s obvious from waymo’s own troubles that even more is needed, not less
While I don’t fully follow the FSD space, I am aware of a multiple waymo crashes recently. And they have the LiDAR, cameras etc
which is safer - having the safety driver in the passenger seat, or the driver seat?
Musk said “We are being super paranoid about safety".
They’re not though - they’re paranoid about showing Tesla fans that most of the time it works all the time, using cameras alone, and that this should somehow be the safety bar with regulators.
Thankfully regulators however have absolutely tired of musks rhetoric, and are now only interested in what they deliver, not what they say - and remember the regulators also have all the waymo data too.
Optics = putting safety driver in passenger seat
This technology is in test mode and it seems prudent to have a safety driver during these testing phases, to do otheriwse would be irresponsible yet it always attarcts negative comment. The specifics of this incident are unknown ..but some would argue that this is an example of action that is rehersed and deployed i.e. where some problem (we don't know what) occurs the safety driver intervenes and takes control of the car and drives (needing to get into driver seat). In all test phases of new technology it is used to identify issues, investigate, learn and improve before widespread roll out (whenever that would be)
An awkward Tesla Robotaxi incident, where the “safety monitor” had to exit the vehicle in the middle of traffic to take the driver’s seat, suggests that Elon Musk’s company is prioritizing optics over safety.
https://electrek.co/2025/08/25/awkward-tesla-robotaxi-incident-proves-optics-over-safety/
I kind of agree. The safety driver should be in the driver seat for....safety.
well spotted.
Jeez, the mileage makes it a terrible deal whatever way you cut it.
3600 + (300*24) =£10.8k/€12.k for 2 years and 16,000km
as always the devil is in the detail, the mileage allowance is very small and the upfront is 3.6k
what i am unsure of is how this interplays with the pretty widespread salary sacrifice scheme they have over there.
Depending on the upfront lump, I suppose it’s about €1k pa better than buying outright, in an Irish context, and obviously if you’re a business it makes it a no-brainer, but it’s possibly no better than we’d pay here, even with this big drop.
It makes the previous £700 lease a pretty awful deal.
Yes will be 24 or 36 months potentially with a 3 or 4 month payment at the start as well
Suspect that headline £300 also includes an upfront payment and the term may well be 36 months as opposed to 60. Without the specifics its difficult to form a view
”Tesla lease customers can currently secure a Model 3 RWD standard range, with a list price of just under £40,000, for £300 a month including VAT via Silverstone Leasing. According to the Times, a similar deal a year ago would have cost between £600 and £700.”
Lease deals are why only 10% of UK annual car sales are what we would call ‘private’ sales, according to SMMT.
That Tesla lease is a bit like us paying €300 on a €37k RWD, which is €18k over a 5 year lease, and a 5 year old RWD is worth €19k at best today, so really you’re still paying all the depreciation, it’s just ‘interest free’ - or do I have that wrong?
As for the previous lease price, Imagine paying £700/€800 pm for a model 3?
