Most people wont have a clue how Autopilot on a plane works whereas pilots will have had extensive training on EXACTLY how to use it, what it does and does not do. Someone buying a car will not have the same knowledge, nor do you have the same amount of time to react to a problem when you're on a road compared to a plane.
Even if it tells you exactly what it does and does not do in the manual, it has to be to a higher standard as you cannot expect someone who is just making a trip to the shops, potentially with many distractions, to be aware of everything it does and does not do at all times. I stand by my claim, its dangerous for ANY car to "partly" self drive, as it causes complacency by the driver if most of the time they do not have to steer. At most it should be able to emergency brake, park, stay in lane, maintain speed on a motorway. The driver should ALWAYS be the one changing lanes, turning corners, etc. We have decades of proof that with the best intentions, people become complacent once a majority of the time they don't have to do something, making them slow to react when they are required to. By its nature, by the time you realise its gone wrong, you may be too late to react.
Its risky to even expect a car to emergency brake:
watch?v=p7lp5f0aqzU
Had this been a real-world scenario with traffic coming in the other direction, things could have gone badly.
My point being, you shouldn't be promoting a system as able to do something unless it can do it 100% of the time. The driver shouldn't just have their hands on the wheel, they should be steering, braking, etc, you should NEVER be relying on the car to react period. But this is not how Tesla are promoting their tech however.
Autopilot is cruise control+line keeping.
I understand if non-Tesla owners don't know the difference between this and
full self driving, but I find it hard to believe that owners don't have a basic idea of what the system does:
1. When ordering a car, you are told the differences between Autopilot and the other paid options. You can't skip the page.
2. Autopilot needs to be enabled manually and the displays tell you what you should do (be ready to take over, pay attention).
3. If you remove your hands from the steering wheel, after a while you'll see and hear warnings to hold the wheel. Newer cars have a camera pointed at the driver too.
4. As you use the feature, you understand and experience its limitations.
Most Tesla owners are informed by point 1, 2, and 3. For those renting, leasing, and buying used cars, there's still points 2 and 3 (no one escapes this).
The system itself isn't special. It maintains speed, distance, and keeps the car inside the lines. Compared to others, it's actually good. My father owns a 2016 Toyota and there are buttons in the steering wheel to set cruise control, increase/decrease speed, etc... but the car doesn't slow down, keep a certain distance, steers, etc. If you don't brake yourself, you'll hit whatever is in front of you.
It's a valid opinion to think that such incomplete systems shouldn't allowed on the road, but if some youtuber uses this as a "prof" that Tesla (or any other brand) is bad and a scam, I just can't take them seriously.
The reason I put part of the blame on the user here is simple. You are the person in control and you *have* to correct the car's mistakes. There have been accidents with Autopilot where the driver was seeing the problem for a few seconds (eg: a truck crossing the road ahead) and they did nothing. You have this huge thing pulling in front of you and... no reaction? Some people will adapt to these systems better than others, but if you're not good with it, why would you keep using it?
And then you have those who work around the system to be on the phone or something like that... this is where I have zero tolerance. It's a "people that shouldn't be allowed on the road" problem, not a problem with the car systems.
My opinion would be completely different if Autopilot was self driving, but it isn't. You need hardware, an account with good score, join the beta, see a few more warnings to use that. If the car tells the driver that it can't self drive and the driver ignores everything and then crashes, I find it hard to blame the car.
Anyway, clearly the "autopilot" name is a problem, so much so they're being investigated in the US and I just read a news article how they may have to be forced to "recall" the software. They should just call it "adaptable cruise control with line assist". I'm sure that would end the "confusion".
I've watched that video, he's using
autopilot. Is it expected for cruise control to bring the car to a stop or go to the other lane to avoid a crash?
I now his videos because there was a discussion a few months ago over at Hacker News about him. He worked for Tesla and made videos of his own car using the self drive beta. It didn't look good (the software is clearly not ready!), but he also would let the car do the mistake instead of taking over. He was fired from Tesla and access to the beta was removed from his account.
Firing him doesn't look good for Tesla. If the beta software is so good, why hide it? On the other hand, it also doesn't look good to have an employer letting the car hit things on a public road. The "tesla employer shows how bad their self drive is" headlines probably didn't help.
I can't find the video right now, but this again comes down to economics. The weight of the batteries required for a truck means the trucks can haul a tiny minority of what a diesel truck can. Musk made claims about cost per distance, but didn't factor this in, making it appear cheaper and more efficient when its not.
In fact, a lot of the problems come down to energy storage. We've pretty much peaked with battery storage, we can't make it much more efficient, the laws of physics dictate so. The only way to make electric trucks work is this:
watch?v=_3P_S7pL7Yg
I'll wait to see what they'll do. I remember reading something about them renting the truck instead of selling them? I don't think anyone was scammed. Worst case there's no truck or it's not a viable product and anyone thinking of renting can use something else or pull out of any deals (I believe that's how it usually goes).
The factory where the Semi is going to be manufactured was completed in Q1 (from the info I found online, could be wrong). Their information for investors says 2023. We'll see what happens soon, I guess.
The idea from that Tom Scott video is interesting, in some places they already use the idea for buses, but I don't know if countries will go with different solutions when it's easier (just the amount of complaints about how the wires look...) to have chargers and more frequent stops. I don't know what's the solution most countries will pick.
Inconsistent range due to improper charging, that's not a small issue especially for long distance travel in rural areas where you could get stuck in the middle of nowhere.
watch?v=eSOHzmqLWjU
I wasn't aware. If that's the case, then they should fix the faulty hardware. No excuses or bs fixes.
This is not a "what about X" excuse, but since some of the videos in this thread are about tesla/spacex being scams, we should keep in mind that this is the expected behaviour from most car manufacturers (one of the reasons why we shouldn't be "loyal" to a brand). For example, the Chevrolet Bolt/Opel Ampera-e received a few software updates before they finally replaced all batteries for free.
As for Viasats negatives, the problem is you're looking at it from a "this is what we want" scenario, rather than "this is what we can do".
We all want perfect broadband that works for everything, but if its not economical or damaging the environment, then we absolutely should NOT be doing that. The end does not justify the means.
Its the same kind of logic as "we need land for x, lets just cut down all the trees and kill off all the wildlife". Sure, it will wipe out all life on earth eventually, but things will be fine for a short while. Are you honestly advocating that we should just ignore all long-term problems in order for a quick fix today?
This is the crux of why I'm critical of Elon Musk, even though I wont be using any of his technology. Because it WILL impact everyone in the long term.
I'm with you in regard to the negative side effects of so many satellites. I also don't see myself using any satellite based internet, so my "defence" of it isn't because I want to have it... but we need to be realistic. Other space alternatives aren't as good and like it or not, this is happening.
There are many places without internet/ground networks or with a really bad service, so there's demand from regular people for
good space based internet. And then you have things like the military, network providers looking for "backhaul" when land based isn't available/is more expensive, companies wanting fast and cheap internet in their ships and planes, etc. The demand is there and if company/country A doesn't do it, company/country B will.
I don't expect everyone to reach a compromise and use just one constellation because the countries that can do this don't trust each other. That's why we have GPS, Galileo, Glonass, Beidu, etc, even though they do the same thing. I guess someone could ban these constellations, but good luck trying to get everyone to agree or to enforce the ban.
Musk could cancel Starlink tomorrow and de-orbit all satellites. Instead of 6 or 7 by the end of the decade, we'd have one less network. I'd rather start working on something to manage the orbits of all these satellites because just like the trees being cut down, those satellites will be up there.
About Musk himself, I don't get the "cult" of loving or hating the guy and he sometimes seems to be a bit of a tw*t, but that doesn't make Starlink more or less viable. What "trigged" my reply here was the speeds and comparison with fibre(!) and not accounting for other sources of revenue. I'm probably wrong about some things, but that video has its problems
Anyway, I don't think I can add much more to this. Time will tell if his companies and respective products/services are good or not.