Yup, and they never need to be.

hph6203 said:

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Yup, and they never need to be.

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They do in Level 3...

Dell doesn't know anything compared to the Texags authorities who never drove a Tesla less an EV

hph6203 said:

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You can't really say that's not how Tesla has developed their system, they have never deployed a system beyond level 2, which is minimally defined as a vehicle with lane keeping and adaptive cruise control.

With respect to the other systems, their go to market systems were level 3 systems, but they had no other choice because they had to demonstrate competence to the consumer as well as needed to generate some offset to their development costs. Tesla is a profitable company with a level 2 system and are capable of generating millions in revenue with a level 2 system, because the vehicles are owned by the operators.

I'm not saying they definitively won't deploy a level 3 system, I'm saying it is not necessary for them to do so because they can demonstrate a system reliable enough to be deployed as a level 4 system while it operates as a level 2 system. I also don't really see the purpose of a level 3 system for their business, because most of the utility can be derived by deploying an extremely competent level 2 system.

If they ever get to a level 4 system with current hardware it will be the most thoroughly proven autonomous system in history. It will be interesting to see how rapidly this current method improves, because it surpassed the old method in under 12 months of development while the other method took, I believe, 6 years.

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What does that sentence even mean? It's either a Level 4 system or it's not. If it operates as a Level 2 system, then it's a Level 2 system.

I suppose they could have lots of Level 4 functionality built into it that can not and will not be able to be activated, but then it's STILL a Level 2 system. Lots of dead code in the autonomy system, though...

The Levels don't depend on reliability, they depend on functionality.

Ag with kids said:

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hph6203 said:

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You can't really say that's not how Tesla has developed their system, they have never deployed a system beyond level 2, which is minimally defined as a vehicle with lane keeping and adaptive cruise control.

With respect to the other systems, their go to market systems were level 3 systems, but they had no other choice because they had to demonstrate competence to the consumer as well as needed to generate some offset to their development costs. Tesla is a profitable company with a level 2 system and are capable of generating millions in revenue with a level 2 system, because the vehicles are owned by the operators.

I'm not saying they definitively won't deploy a level 3 system, I'm saying it is not necessary for them to do so because they can demonstrate a system reliable enough to be deployed as a level 4 system while it operates as a level 2 system. I also don't really see the purpose of a level 3 system for their business, because most of the utility can be derived by deploying an extremely competent level 2 system.

If they ever get to a level 4 system with current hardware it will be the most thoroughly proven autonomous system in history. It will be interesting to see how rapidly this current method improves, because it surpassed the old method in under 12 months of development while the other method took, I believe, 6 years.

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What does that sentence even mean? It's either a Level 4 system or it's not. If it operates as a Level 2 system, then it's a Level 2 system.

I suppose they could have lots of Level 4 functionality built into it that can not and will not be able to be activated, but then it's STILL a Level 2 system. Lots of dead code in the autonomy system, though...

The Levels don't depend on reliability, they depend on functionality.

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Musk did promise a level 4 or 5 cross country trip in a Tesla in 2017 or 18 as I recall. I am still waiting for it. The idea that they are going to be level 4 anytime soon is highly unlikely IMO. They are realizing it is a lot harder to overcome certain situations that present themselves in everyday driving. Will they get there eventually, I think so but just like the recent AI pronouncements, humans aren't going to be replaced tomorrow because of computer limitations around problem solving, intuition, logic, etc.

Facebook is at a different URL.

We need to Imagine a ICE vehicle that does not exist?

Where is this 2,500 lbs new car that has a 1,200 mile range in all weather conditions, meets the US crash standards, and only costs $20k to $25k?

No code gets deactivated going from a level 4 system to a level 2 system. That is not what delineates a level 4 system from a level 2 system. It is activating code that delineates a level 4 system from a level 2 system. That code is the driver monitoring system that requires the driver to pay attention and have the capacity to take over immediately from the autonomous drive system. There is nothing a level 4 system can do that a level 2 system can't other than have no driver in the seat.

Level 4: No driver monitoring (No person in the seat)
Level 3: Driver presence sensor activated (a person in the seat)
Level 2: Driver attention and presence sensor activated (i.e. an in-cabin camera that tracks the driver's eyes and/or a requirement to show their presence through touching/slightly turning the wheel, dependent upon on the manufacturer)

That's it. There are no other limitations to what the system can do. That doesn't mean every level 2 or 3 system can do everything a level 4 system can do, but there's nothing preventing it from doing everything a level 4 system can do other than the above-mentioned driver monitoring systems being activated for each level. That's why I say they don't have to develop or deploy a level 3 system because it provides no utility to the company and limited utility to the consumer while presenting increased litigation risk to the company.

When I say a level 2 system can have the same reliability as a level 4 system what I'm saying is that the driver in the seat can be superfluous to the operation of the vehicle, but still be required to be in the seat and ready to intervene if the system does not perform properly. Meaning that on a fleet-wide basis the system can have an average rate of human intervention every 1,000,000 miles at which point Tesla says to the regulators "Our system is operating at a level beyond human capacity, approve it for level 4 operation." While never building or deploying a level 3 system, because it is not necessary for their intended goal of removing drivers from vehicles, nor is it beneficial to them as a company to do that other than to drive adoption of their software/provide freedom to their customers that can be easily achieved by dialing down the rate of nag from their autonomous system as it improves.

So true. Jalopnik: EV price premium is evaporating. Good piece.

Quote:

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There are currently 57 electric vehicle models on sale in the U.S., and while Tesla is still the most popular, new players in the electric car market are driving competition and prices keep dropping. EV sales are still growing, though that rate of growth has slowed dramatically over the last year or so. The enthusiastic early adopters have already bought in, and the market hasn't been very successful at courting traditional gas car buyers. Without a robust infrastructure and mediocre consumer education, EV sales are lagging behind projections, which is also driving pricing down. According to data from Cox Automotive, the price premium for an EV over their gasoline counterparts has shrunk to less than $5,000. That's down from a $17,000 price gap in 2022.

With increased competition segment leader Tesla has resorted to dramatic price cuts in an attempt to keep market share. Tesla's popular Model 3 sedan fell in price from $47,000 in early 2023 to just $38,990 today.

A Model Y Performance fell from seventy grand last year to just $52,500 right now. If you think that's dramatic, the price drop of the company's more expensive Model S and Model X was over $40,000 year over year, in some cases. These precipitous price drops are also driving the competition to lower their prices.

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Quote:

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In addition to the factory price cuts, dealers are starting to wheel and deal on electric car inventory that has sat around on the lot for a few months. Average EV prices dropped $2,000 in February alone! "We're going to continue to see price cuts or discounts just because there's inventory and [dealers are] really trying to get these sold," said Stephanie Valdez Streaty, director of Industry Insights at Cox Automotive.

This price dropping trend isn't going to end here, either. Expect EV prices to continue trending downward, to be less expensive than gasoline cars, maybe even within the year. There are a number of factors that could make this happen in the short term. If Chinese automakers figure out a way to get their less expensive EVs into the U.S. market, you'll see a dramatic price shift almost immediately. Further, the price of batteries is continuing to fall as scale continues to ramp up. Batteries are nearly 90 percent less expensive than they were in the pre-mainstream-EV world of 2008.

And that's just new cars. The price of used EVs is dropping like a stone as consumers prefer to buy new when dealing with a new technology.

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Best selling car in the world!

Teslag said:

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People with dementia shouldn't be driving at all, much less worrying about the shifter

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Point well made regarding dementia. However, there are hundreds of thousands of drivers driving with some form of dementia.

Someone should fund a study to test a sample size of current drivers from the Greatest Generation through Boomers and give an estimate of what percentage of these drivers have some form of dementia, alzheimers, diminished cognitive function, .......etc

Cybertruck can't even cross a puddle of water without stalling. Hate to have to evacuate from a hurricane with it.

https://jalopnik.com/watch-this-tesla-cybertruck-sputter-out-after-driving-t-1851347369

Earnings estimates keep plunging. They're going back to hiking prices to earn more. I guess that canard about how high tech always come down in price was another lie.

https://www.investors.com/news/tesla-stock-ev-giant-ready-to-hike-vehicle-prices/

Quote:

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The pricing move comes after Tesla, to maintain sales momentum, has aggressively cut vehicle prices and offered discounts for more than a year. As a result, auto gross margins, which peaked at 30% in Q4 2021 amid industry chip shortages, have plunged well below 20%.

Analysts argue the strategy is not helping demand and is hurting the company. Tesla observers report that inventory is currently quite high and that the EV giant's price hikes do not indicate rising demand.

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techno-ag said:

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Cybertruck can't even cross a puddle of water without stalling. Hate to have to evacuate from a hurricane with it.

https://jalopnik.com/watch-this-tesla-cybertruck-sputter-out-after-driving-t-1851347369

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I regret skimming that idiotic "article". Some moron using twitter comments for a scoop.

"Suffice it to say, the truck continued to get cooked in the comments. Field, however, considered the Moab trip a success. But with how Tesla fans and Cybertruck owners do everything they can to save face and make these trucks look as cool as possible, it's doubtful we'll ever know what really happened to the truck."

Basically: "I have no idea what I'm talking about but people said mean things about it on twitter."

They didn't raise prices to cover rising costs. They didn't raise prices to improve profitability. I'll give you an opportunity to guess why they raised prices, but you absolutely 100% will not get it right.

It was a plastic wheel well cover that got dislodged/scraped against the tire. Hopped out. Reseated it. Moved on.

The front part of the wheel well liner disconnected and started rubbing on the wheel. I pulled it back and field repaired it like you do...

— Kyle Field (@mrkylefield) March 15, 2024

Happens all the time with the cybertruck. All. The. Time. All sorts of issues.

https://jalopnik.com/all-the-tesla-cybertruck-screw-ups-since-delivery-so-f-1851331727/slides/2

Guy on TikTok looked at pictures and never sat in the truck and has opinions on its design. Wholly unsurprised you find TikTok to be a reliable source of information.

1. The steering wheel has a button on it that brings up the forward facing bumper camera. You can see anything you want. It even has a wiper function that you can activate from the steering wheel to clear the camera.

2. The gear shift on the headliner is a secondary shifting option, the primary shifter is on the screen and the vehicle actually shifts between drive and reverse based upon the present scenario/last method it parked. i.e. if you nosedived into a parking spot it begins in reverse when you press the brake. If you backed in it starts in drive. If you're performing a 3 point turn you swipe on the screen up/down to shift.

3. The truck does not need stalks. It is a steer by wire drive system, meaning that at no point does the driver's hands have to come off the wheel, and at no point does a handover hand maneuver need to be done. It is a 170 degree lock to lock, meaning that the steering wheel does not wholly invert. Ever.

4. Most vehicles I've been in do not have a wiper that completely clears the windshield, but the wiper on the Cybertruck does a wholly competent job of clearing the space the driver needs to see.

5. The tonneau cover remains closed. The rearview mirror is there in the event you want to drive with it open. The rearview camera operates as the rearview mirror and remains active while the truck is in operation and expands to take up the whole screen when the vehicle is in reverse.

6. The door has enough opening force to break 1" of solid ice and is going to be an easier opening than any vehicle I've owned during an ice event, not only because it can break through 1" of ice, but because you can schedule the vehicle to wholly defrost in advance of any trip.

I'm curious what functionality you believe is disabled in level 2 operation. There's nothing it can't do one time successfully. It's a matter of its consistency of accurately perceiving a scenario and what to do in it that necessitates its operation at level 2. It is not a limitation of control or even the potential of its understanding of circumstances, it just does not accurately recognize all circumstances all of the time.

Tesla FSD driving in San Francisco to SFO to drop someone off at the airport. In the entirety of the video the only input the driver makes is starting the software and at SFO to back up closer to the curb to let the passenger out, because the system does not yet have the ability to reverse enabled, but it has been said by their lead designer that it will be enabled within the next month. The rest of the controls were performed by the vehicle.

This is a 4x speed video. I would suggest muting as the guy who posts these videos has terrible taste in music, and increasing the speed to 2x. It'll take 5 minutes of your life and you'll maybe understand that it's not functionality that's enabled going from level 2 to level 4.



This is the same video at 1x speed without the music:



This is Tesla FSD being used on snowy roads in Wisconsin, human input is limited to starting/stopping the software each time it reaches its destination. There is no level 4 system available to the public in the U.S. that I'm aware of that operates in snow, they have done private testing, but no public availability:

I was looking for news about the recent Tesla fire in Bethalto, IL but this matched up at the top of my list of Tesla fires. It is interesting that the car had to be buried to stop it from reigniting. Sorry if already on here.

Devastating. Stay safe, Ags, keep the combustion internal.

nortex97 said:

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Devastating. Stay safe, Ags, keep the combustion internal.

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Unless you have a teen driver and care about their life.

https://abc7chicago.com/toyota-recall-check-2024-on-rav4-battery/14480011/

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CHICAGO (WLS) -- A suburban teenager narrowly escaped his Toyota SUV after it burst into flames on the expressway. His family said they didn't know about an advisory for a potential fire risk before buying the car.

Tyler Kustuch, 18, of Deerfield was driving to a volleyball tournament on the Stevenson near Midway in October when his car caught fire, starting in the front.

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Fake news. We all know from Texags that only EVs catch fire.

Just like if EV prices go down, it is a sign they are bad technology. Also if the price goes up, they are a disaster.

NEWS: Shell to unload 1,000 gas stations in pivot to EV charging.

Shell: “We are upgrading our retail network, with expanded electric vehicle charging and convenience offers, in response to changing customer needs." https://t.co/sYpHVfanTd

— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) March 19, 2024

Tesla FSD system smart enough to re-route based upon the visual system identifying an alternative route not currently in it's route planner:

FSD Beta 12.3 - Overriding The Navigation

In this video, we see another example of FSD Beta 12.3 ignoring the pre-determined navigation route and choosing its own, more efficient route, allowing me to get to my destination quicker.

12.3 is the first version I've experienced… pic.twitter.com/AvFI0HqZ8D

— Arthur | FSD 12.3 Videos (@ArthurFromX) March 20, 2024

The gasoline pumping business has never been a big money maker. The money is made inside the store.

For the majors, they have been getting out of branding gas stations because it is a public relations nightmare and doesn't really help their business. People see the changing gasoline prices at the pump which are set by the local station ownwrs but they blame the oil companies.

Been said before but if EV adoption passes a certain threshold, ICE vehicles will become less and less convenient to drive as gas stations get fewer and farther between. Had to stop for gas on the way home from work last night, which I will be happy to be done with whenever I get an EV

"FSD" really has nothing to do with the power type of the vehicle. This is why I generally ignore those posts here.

Recall incoming for the faulty wiper system, a longtime issue.

https://www.thecooldown.com/green-business/tesla-auto-wipers-fix-coming-soon/

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Since Tesla first introduced the auto wipers in 2018, their performance has been inconsistent at best and laughable at worst. According to multiple stories over the last several years, the wipers have a tendency to kick on when there is no rain, and not when there is, or sometimes just not enough to match the amount of precipitation.

Tesla was kind enough to install an update in 2023 that allowed owners to turn off the auto wiper feature.

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CNBC: EV euphoria is dead. Whelp, it was nice while it lasted, I guess.

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/13/ev-euphoria-is-dead-automakers-trumpet-consumer-choice-in-us.html

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The buzz around electric vehicles is wearing off.

For years, the automotive industry has been in a state of EV euphoria. Automakers trotted out optimistic sales forecasts for electric models and announced ambitious targets for EV growth. Wall Street boosted valuations for legacy automakers and startup entrants alike, based in part on their visions for an EV future.

Now the hype is dwindling, and companies are again cheering consumer choice. Automakers from Ford Motor
and General Motors to Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, Jaguar Land Rover and Aston Martin are scaling back or delaying their electric vehicle plans.

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FJB, F the WEF, F climate alarmism, F big government spending on green new deals and big governments controlling or manipulating the markets with burdensome and unconstitutional regulations on things like emissions or forcing industry to convert, drill baby drill, and all of that..

...but I keep seeing selective biased media that tells me my new toy is better at a lot of things than even souped up versions of my old truck.

This latest proposed mandate from the administration is an abomination and needs to be stopped.

Bonus is that almost every vegan you meet will be distracted enough by it to consider not sharing their dietary plan superiority complex.

Kansas Kid said:

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Ag with kids said:

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hph6203 said:

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You can't really say that's not how Tesla has developed their system, they have never deployed a system beyond level 2, which is minimally defined as a vehicle with lane keeping and adaptive cruise control.

With respect to the other systems, their go to market systems were level 3 systems, but they had no other choice because they had to demonstrate competence to the consumer as well as needed to generate some offset to their development costs. Tesla is a profitable company with a level 2 system and are capable of generating millions in revenue with a level 2 system, because the vehicles are owned by the operators.

I'm not saying they definitively won't deploy a level 3 system, I'm saying it is not necessary for them to do so because they can demonstrate a system reliable enough to be deployed as a level 4 system while it operates as a level 2 system. I also don't really see the purpose of a level 3 system for their business, because most of the utility can be derived by deploying an extremely competent level 2 system.

If they ever get to a level 4 system with current hardware it will be the most thoroughly proven autonomous system in history. It will be interesting to see how rapidly this current method improves, because it surpassed the old method in under 12 months of development while the other method took, I believe, 6 years.

---

What does that sentence even mean? It's either a Level 4 system or it's not. If it operates as a Level 2 system, then it's a Level 2 system.

I suppose they could have lots of Level 4 functionality built into it that can not and will not be able to be activated, but then it's STILL a Level 2 system. Lots of dead code in the autonomy system, though...

The Levels don't depend on reliability, they depend on functionality.

---

Musk did promise a level 4 or 5 cross country trip in a Tesla in 2017 or 18 as I recall. I am still waiting for it. The idea that they are going to be level 4 anytime soon is highly unlikely IMO. They are realizing it is a lot harder to overcome certain situations that present themselves in everyday driving. Will they get there eventually, I think so but just like the recent AI pronouncements, humans aren't going to be replaced tomorrow because of computer limitations around problem solving, intuition, logic, etc.

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As difficult as the technical problem is (and Level 4 IS difficult), I think there are two bigger issues that will be harder to overcome. First, is the regulatory issue...getting government to approve it will be VERY hard. But, that's because of the other BIGGER issue - public acceptance.

I work in the UAS industry and one of the things we're working on is Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) - think Uber Air Taxis. People would get in fully autonomous UAS that could transport them ABOVE the traffic to their locations. But, one of the huge things we understand is that the technology and regulations are a distant second to getting the public to a) allow it to happen and b) actually ride in one.