Tesla starts release of Full Self-Driving Beta in the US

[cdnmatt]

I'm still waiting for my fully self driving robot car that Must has been promising for years. When is that coming?





Note
This post and one other originated in the, Hopes Dashed for BKK Bars and GoGo’s topic and were moved here to create a new and separate discussion. A quick link back to the original topic is posted below:
https://sawatdeenetwork.com/v4/showthread.php?22454-Hopes-Dashed-for-BKK-Bars-and-GoGo%E2%80%99s/page2

[Nirish guy]

The BETA version was just launched to the public a few weeks ago actually........

https://electrek.co/2021/10/11/tesla-officially-starts-wider-release-of-full-self-driving-beta-us/

But lets not side track this thread with that perhaps, I'm merely answering your question.

Mods - feel free to move both posts to the EV thread should you wish perhaps.....

[goji]

The BETA version was just launched to the public a few weeks ago actually........

https://electrek.co/2021/10/11/tesla-officially-starts-wider-release-of-full-self-driving-beta-us/

But lets not side track this thread with that perhaps, I'm merely answering your question.

Mods - feel free to move both posts to the EV thread should you wish perhaps.....

As expected "Full Self Driving" means the driver has to supervise at all times, so no sitting in the back reading the newspaper.
So very limited benefits in my view.

Whilst not 100% certain, I don't ever expect existing Tesla owners will get the kind of "Full Self Driving" that does allow the customer to sit in the back, because as far as I can tell, they don't have the necessary redundancy in steering and braking systems.

[cdnmatt]

As expected "Full Self Driving" means the driver has to supervise at all times, so no sitting in the back reading the newspaper.

But Must promised us robo taxis. He said buying a Tesla would become an investment, because once you're home from work you can just push a button, and your Tesla would fuck off driving around the city acting like a taxi and making you money.

That's what I'm waiting for. I'd love to buy a car again, would definitely beat fumbling around walking around with a cane, that's for sure.

[Nirish guy]

Whilst personally I think we're WAY off sending your car out to be a robotaxi as he's suggested ( as there are just so / too many variables in various locations) I can tell you that FSD ( whilst still in Beta and certainly not perfect) IS a get in, tell your sat nav where to go and it takes you there type deal. Again it IS still BETA and thats crucially important as they literally are just rolling it out now to the people who'd pre purchased it but as I guess as it's a brand new technololgy it'll be a while before it (ever) works 100% perfectly, everywhere, every time? But being Ai based and using it's own interlinked neural net it is of course always "learning" and improving and with the over the air updates Telsa's receive by wifi as it / they improve it so each car ( that has it) gets better.

But yes you / someone is / has to be in the driving seat and paying attention for sure but my god wouldn't you WANT to be !? as whilst YOUR car may be automated to various degrees not everyones is (yet) and so I certainly wouldn't give my life over to a computer without some level of control in my over ruling its decisions should I decide to ( hence why we've still pilots in planes and most people are fine with that - well aside from Michael OLeary from Ryanair perhaps :-)).

I have the model down from the full FSD (full self driving) version ( as being in N.Ireland there was no point in buying the full FSD version, mainly based on our ridiculous country roads here that no Telsa had ever been programmed for (yet) i.e it had no idea what a roundabout was and no idea how to naviagte one yet here in the UK !).

But I can tell you when motorway driving etc and I flick on my cruise control button that speeds and brakes in line with other traffic etc using it's sensors ( and the other models that change lanes and pull off motorway slip roads at the right junctions etc via sat nav etc) it makes for a MUCH more relaxing journey / arrival that's for sure.

I "may" use it for more than just motorway driving too but the less said about that the better perhaps, but lets just say I find it very useful :-)

PS I'd no intention of starting a thread about this and imagined it would just get dropped into the existing EV thread below......Im not THAT into cars even ! I was merely answering Matt's direct question re self driving and passing on my experience as I find things.

[cdnmatt]

Yeah, true enough, I'm expecting it to be a while. There's a huge gap between "wow, that's really impressive" and "I'm going to trust my life with this thing".

heh.

[Nirish guy]

There's a huge gap between "wow, that's really impressive" and "I'm going to trust my life with this thing"..

I think that will ( should) ALWAYS be the case with ANY tech. But saying that I have to be honest and confess that there's many a time my car is driving me up the road and I'm maybe already not quite as attentive as I should be - saying that as I figure even now my car is probably a more observant, careful driver than I am I figure the more I let it drive and I sit back I'm probably doing other road users a favour ! :)

That actually in all seriousness is Elon Musk's view too and he's stated that the main risks ( apart from an automated car doing somehting crazy) is the fact that other cars ARENT automated to the same degree and it's that unkown risk factor which increases the danger expotentially and he believes when all cars get Ai and are automated to a larger degree accident rates will drop ( Im not so sure I'm buying into that one just yet mind) - but saying that as my car does crazy things like making me adhere to the speed limits and things for a rare change then I GUESS that's even a posssibility too !

[cdnmatt]

Yeah, what will be really cool is when the day comes where there's enough self driving cars on the road that they can communicate with each other. That will definitely drive down car accidents.

And yeah, having a car that can watch in a 360 degrees radius every second without things like impulse or frustration getting in the way would definitely be quite handy. Not sure if we'll ever get computers up to our level of intuition and prediction though.

I would imagine what will happen is once these self driving cars start being deployed, slowly insurance companies will basically force people's hands into buying them. Sure, self driving cars are going to cause some accidents, but us humans seem very good at that ourselves, and self driving cars will probably cause far less accidents. Due to that, in the future I'd imagine insuring a self driving car will be much cheaper, hence people will begin buying them more often.

Exciting times.

[christianpfc]

Robotics (I mean the sensors and programs) has made tremendous advancements over the last decades, just look at robots that can jump, run, play ball games. Self driving cars will come sooner or later.

Regarding accidents, a lot of accidents are caused by drunk driving and speeding, recently overtaken by driver being distracted by mobile phone. All of these are absent for self driving cars.

[francois]

Does anyone know if "self driving" cars are currently programmed to observe the speed limit?
If so, why would anyone wish to buy an expensive car such as a Tesla and then plod along while every other car would be passing you?

[Nirish guy]

Does anyone know if "self driving" cars are currently programmed to observe the speed limit?

The driver can choose to either let the cars sensors both physically read the speed limit signs as it passes them or / and use GPS location mapping software to adhere to the speed limits either exactly or just under it or say 5/10 mph over it if you wish. OR turn all of that off and set it to auto stick to whatever speed you decide.

Or turn everything off and just physically manually drive just as fast or as slow so as your own conscience / luck with speed cameras let’s you think you can get away with.

Have to say I historically wouldn’t have been the best at sticking to speed limits and I would have thought doing so would have irk’d me a bit BUT weirdly I’m finding it doesn't really bother me at all now and it is nice to know I’m not risking a ticket or points on my licence every time I go over a hill and find a police speed camera van pointing it’s camera at me - which I don’t know about where you all live but is starting to happen WAY to often to be comfortable of late.
All options are a simple click of a button / touch of the iPad style screen and are all just totally the drivers choice and all instantly interchangeable second by second as you / the car drives along.

[goji]

"Tesla drivers say they have been locked out of their cars after an outage struck the carmaker's app.

Dozens of owners posted on social media about seeing an error message on the mobile app that was preventing them from connecting to their vehicles.

The Tesla app is used as a key by drivers to unlock and start their cars."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-59357306

I'm amazed that people rely on such things.

[Nirish guy]

I'm amazed that people rely on such things.

Likewise - as it states quite clearly in the owners manual when you get the car the Phone App is ONE method of accessing the car BUT you're also supplied with a credit card style passcard too which they recommend you keep in your wallet etc for just such an eventuality ever happening. NO tech that depends on worldwide servers etc is going to work 100% of the time, everywhere, everywhere and always - and anyone who thinks it will to be honest deserves that hour or whatever it was that they were locked out of their car ot remind them that proabbly will never be the case in life and they should carry the back up they were provided.

My card stays in my wallet at all time and I think I've had to use it once and maybe twice at most in over two years, either to access or to start my car - I think that's reasonable considering the number of times it's worked perfectly throughout that time span.

The App never was JUST for gaining access to your car as there are a ton of other features on there too and those other features are actually probably more to be with thereason the App exists in the first place and the fact that it also happens to auto unlock your car door as you walk up to it is and was just one of many other features of their App.

So the people who complained that they perhaps couldn't access their car ( when they always could have actually if they read the manual) really to me have only themselves to blame in their trusting ANY tech 100% to work 100% of the time. We all know servers go down and tech sometimes falls over, so to do that is / was just nuts to me and I'm sure anyone familiar with Apple, Microsoft, Google or any of the hundreds of other tech firms out there will have experienced the same issue with their own ramdon devices too at different times.

The media of course were happy to try and blow this up to be a bigger story than it ever was, but I guess that's the way of the world these days sadly.