I don't trust anything Tesla posts on their website about self driving. They've been known to post entirely fictional stories about their self driving. Crazy you still choose to believe them after they've been known to so brazenly lie there.
David Moss is a traveling LiDAR salesman. He doesn’t work for Tesla, and Tesla didn’t know about him until one of his tweets about his FSD experience went viral. Unless you think he faked images of his FSD stats for months and Tesla went along with it, I’m not sure what to tell you.[1]
Let’s say, hypothetically, that someone has gone thousands of miles on FSD without intervening. What information would need to exist to convince you of this?
The verified, raw data of at least 1,000 other people's worth of data, so the data has a chance of being statistically significant, rather than 1 random dude out of billions posting on the car company CEO's website (on which said CEO is infamous for moderating content to suit his views and ego).
That’s what it will take for you to believe that someone has gone thousands of miles without intervening? I don’t think that even Waymo (which has thousands of vehicles that have gone much farther without human intervention) has met the criteria you’ve set.
> If one person can do this then thousands should also be able to.
That’s not at all true. Very few people take the time to drive thousands of miles in a short period of time and document it while never intervening for any reason (not even accidentally bumping the wheel).
Anyways, I remember you. You claimed that Tesla would never remove safety drivers from their robotaxis.[1] I tried to get us to bet on this prediction but you never replied.
Well, Tesla has removed safety drivers from some of their robotaxis, meaning your prediction that their technology is “never going to be reliable enough” was falsified within a few months.
It is true because millions of people own Tesla's with FSD. Moreover if FSD really worked this well Tesla would be happily publishing this data at tesla.com/FSDstats . But instead Tesla is very secretive with their FSD data because it overall isn't very good.
"Tesla has removed safety drivers from some of their robotaxis"
Why doesn't Tesla has as many empty Robotaxis as Waymo has cars? Because Robotaxis aren't good enough. The entire Robotaxi rollout is a very carefully choreographed smoke and mirrors show to inflate Tesla share price. Tesla doesn't even have the permits to operate Robotaxis in California and probably never will because they are actually stricter vs Texas.
> Tesla doesn't even have the permits to operate Robotaxis in California and probably never will because they are actually stricter vs Texas.
I'd like to note that in just a few months, the goalposts have moved from "Tesla will never get rid of their safety drivers in their Robotaxis" to "Tesla will never operate Robotaxis in California."
As before, would you like to bet on your prediction? I'm willing to wager you any amount up to $1,000 that before the end of 2028, Tesla will have Robotaxis in California, available to the public, without a safety driver. Note that this may not require a permit for deployment, just driverless testing, as that is how Waymo currently operates.[1]
December 31st, 2028 may seem like a long ways off, but it's much sooner than never.
"Tesla will never get rid of their safety drivers in their Robotaxis"
They didn't though, they just moved them to a chase car. Because Elon Musk is an incredibly successful con artist. Why isn't every robotaxi driverless and open to the public like Waymo is? Tesla is so far behind Waymo it is laughable.
You can find videos of people taking Robotaxis without any chase car.[1] Though the use of chase cars shouldn't be surprising. Waymo did a similar thing with their self-driving rollout. They started with a small number of cars in suburbs in Arizona, with safety drivers. As they built up trust in the system, they gradually removed constraints and oversight. Now they have autonomous vehicles in complicated environments (such as San Francisco) with remote human assistance for when the software can't handle something. (Sometimes these remote operators are overwhelmed, such as when the power goes out in San Francisco and too many Waymos request human intervention.[2]) One should expect Tesla to follow the same path of gradually removing supervision as they build trust in their autonomous systems.
Hey what do you know its that same guy David Moss that has nothing but pro-Tesla posts providing the evidence. Strange how it always seems to be the same few people over and over here.
Unless you think the video is faked, I'm not sure what your point is. It's an example of an unsupervised Robotaxi trip without any chase car. Of course you're going to get a selection effect where enthusiasts are mostly the ones posting these videos, especially in the case where they're recording behind the vehicle to prove there is no chase car. Normal people just take Waymo/Robotaxi/Zoox without recording and uploading their trip.
It isn't fake but it is a one off stunt not open to the public being relentlessly hyped by long time pro-Tesla shills which is very characteristic of Tesla's entire Robotaxi operation. People don't normally upload Waymo trips because they are completely mundane.
> Very few people take the time to drive thousands of miles in a short period of time
Luckily that's not a requirement here. If your 1 example, your 1 datapoint isn't a fluke, then someone driving 100 miles should have 1/10th the interruptions as someone driving 1000 miles.
If you have to intervene 0 times in 1000 miles, and that isn't an outler, then we should expect to see 0 intervention required in all 100 mile drives, all 10 mile drives, and all 1 mile drives. Unless it's a fluke.
Statistics > 1 anecdotal post about a car on the car company CEO's website.
Tesla is on fire, took them 12 years to have few cars drive from point A to point B (not always safe but progress nonetheless)… suprised their P/E is not in the many thousands with this amazing feat they accomplished, well ahead of all of their competitors
Happily, I don't care about Waymo. I do care about statistical competency among the population. Everyone should know that a single data point is irrelevant, as it could be noise just as easily as it could be signal. It is statistically insignificant.
You can actually do the math to find out the sample size you would need to derive a statistically significant conclusion. No need to be incredulous at my answer to your question: it's basic statistics.
As an aside: in general, if you find yourself going to a single person for data and expertise, you might be falling victim to a personality cult.
The reason I'm using a single example is because we don't have comparable statistics across manufacturers, and because it's enough to demonstrate my point about Tesla's autonomous capabilities versus other brands. I am saying the same thing you are: Examples exist of FSD being used for thousands of consecutive miles without intervention. But you cannot find such examples for any other consumer car brand today. If Blue Cruise, Super Cruise, Mercedes-Benz Driver Assistance, or any other technology went similar distances without any human intervention, then it would be accurate to claim that, "Other brands have had self driving features for years now. Some even operate at a higher level of automation." But we don't have such examples, so it's not accurate to make such claims.
Nowhere in this thread am I claiming that FSD is safe enough to be used without human oversight. I'm also not claiming that Tesla has delivered on their promises (they obviously haven't). I am comparing the capabilities of autonomous systems using evidence that is publicly available. Since we don't have comparable statistics across manufacturers or some sort of standardized road test, I think "miles between human interventions" is a useful measure of autonomous capabilities. That's what has been used to demonstrate safety of other autonomous systems, and I see no good reason why such a metric should be ignored in this case.
> Since we don't have comparable statistics across manufacturers or some sort of standardized road test
We don't have data on the intervention rate of Teslas, either. So far all you've presented is a single, non-statistically-significant anecdote.
>I think "miles between human interventions" is a useful measure of autonomous capabilities.
Exactly. What is Tesla's average miles between human intervention? The anecdote you presented is maybe 1/1000th of the minimum data you would need (of randomly selected participants) to answer that question. 1,000 is a bold claim, it requires statistically significant evidence
How about if a guy who wrote an article titled Five Things My Roomba Does Better Than My Tesla[1] later drove across the country without intervening?[2] Unless all three people in the car are lying, it seems like an independent example of going thousands of miles without intervening.
> Both are deeply knowledgeable about Tesla’s Full-Self Driving suite and Roy stressed that he couldn’t have completed the trip without them.
Totally fully self driving even though you need not one, not two, but three autonomous driving experts with you. And be sure to have a second car with you when your first autonomous vehicle strands you. Sure sounds like a reliable system ready for the masses to use on public roadways!
I think you misread the article. The stranding was because they left a place without one of the passengers and had to go back to get him. It had nothing to do with autonomous driving. I’m not sure what help the autonomous driving experts added beyond recommending cleaning the cameras at each stop. None of them work for Tesla, and it’s not like they could tweak the software along the way.
I’m not making any claims about FSD’s safety or how ready it is for mass usage on public roads. I am trying to figure out what information would convince you that someone has used FSD for thousands of miles without intervening. Does this count or not? If not, why?
> I am trying to figure out what information would convince you that someone has used FSD for thousands of miles without intervening.
I never doubted it, I just said I don't trust things Tesla states on their website (they're objectively known to lie, especially when it comes to videos about their self driving) and I don't trust randos on Twitter.
I will say though, the people in the article have a vested interest in pushing a pro-AV agenda. But in the end, sure, I guess they probably did have that trip they say they did.
It doesn't surprise me people managed to go thousands of miles without disengaging especially since it sounds like this isn't their first time trying (flip a coin enough and you'll possibly get heads several times in a row after all) and that's nearly all highway miles. I've personally driven many shots on a non-Tesla well over 150 miles hands-free without any disengagements on a system that attempts less than what Tesla does. The only disengagements for most of those drives were to exit the highway to charge. You pick a route that has easy to get to chargers, you don't venture off the highways much, sure sounds possible to me. In the end though I don't personally see it as that radical of a difference on a road trip. On a nearly 300mi drive I probably directly operated the car like 5 of those miles total. Is risking people's lives at the surface street parts with beta software worth that last little bit?
Note, that's several thousand miles of no disengagements on a long, pre-planned cross country drive. Not 10,000 miles of driving around in a city and having all the other randomness of life peppered in. So what are we really measuring here? I'm sure we could get it to 500,000mi or more on a closed course if we wanted to. Although, after saying that, they still haven't on the Las Vegas Loop, so...maybe not?
And people act like this is delivering what Elon promised about cross-country autonomous driving. But it's not. They still needed the driver there in the car, paying attention the whole way. They still needed to charge it themselves. So we're a decade late and we still don't actually have what was promised.
If you never doubted it, then why did you call me crazy to believe it, then want something more convincing than, “a random Twitter feed and a news post from a company which is known to spread lies”? It’s quite annoying to spend time digging up information only to be gaslit about the need to provide it.
Regarding the rest of your comment: Again, nowhere in this thread am I making any claims about FSD’s safety or how ready it is for mass usage on public roads. I am not saying it lives up to the promises or that it has been delivered on schedule. You are making arguments against beliefs I do not hold. That is a waste of time for both of us.
The point I am making is that other brands have zero examples of consumers using them on public roads without intervention for thousands of consecutive miles, so claiming they are equivalent or better in capability to FSD is not accurate.
I called you crazy for citing a website known for publishing lies.
> only to be gaslit about the need to provide it
I never asked for you to go digging. Your own personal drive to stan for Tesla did that.
> claiming they are equivalent or better in capability to FSD is not accurate.
I'm not saying they're 100% exactly the same. I'm just saying spending 5 miles actually operating the car on a several hundred mile road trip is pretty much the same as not touching the wheel at all to me if I'm still ultimately responsible for the operation of the car. In the end I had to completely pay attention the whole way. Until it's actually (Unsupervised) it's really mostly the same to me. Especially since I can't really trust the not-full not-self driving to not get into an accident or kill someone with me as the one responsible.
That’s a terribly low bar for evidence - it’s deciding to pick whatever self-reported data confirms your priors.
Far more than 3 individuals believed that Ivermectin cured them of COVID - I, however, chose to not believe them and get vaccinated instead.
FWIW, my experience with FSD on HW4 is that I don’t need to intervene roughly for a 100ish miles on a clear day on a freeway without construction or accidents. That’s good enough for me to subscribe during roadtrips, but Musk and his legion of supporters is overselling capabilities - as usual.
One key difference in that analogy is that covid can clear up on its own, allowing people to convince themselves that some quackery worked. But cars don’t drive themselves thousands of miles, so anyone claiming their car did so (and posting photos of their FSD stats) would have to be deliberately lying.
Have Tesla and its fanboys overstated FSD’s capabilities? Absolutely. But I’m not saying that FSD is currently good enough that one should expect to have thousands of miles between interventions. I’m trying to convince someone that it has been done. The reason I’m trying to do this is because that same cannot be said for any other self-driving technology available in a consumer vehicle today, so claiming that FSD is no better than competing offerings is not accurate. FSD overhyped? Sure. Late? Extremely. Fraudulent, bordering on criminal? I could see that. But it’s still in a league of its own in terms of what it can do.
I've ridden in Teslas many times operating in "FSD" (read: not fully, and not self, driving), nearly every time its made some kind of moving violation including nearly hitting a pedestrian. No thanks.
I heard the same thing in 2019, HW3 solved all the issues, it finally just works as advertised. That was after HW2 was guaranteed to ship with all the hardware needed for FSD a decade ago, for real this time.
I'll probably wait for HW5, then you'll tell me its really there. This time it won't even run people over, and it actually stops at stop signs more than just 98% of the time.
