Tesla
1 HN recommender · recommended in 4 months, 2019–2025
1:57 · 23M views · Apr 23, 2019
A short Tesla promotional video showing a car driving itself along a route from the company's Palo Alto headquarters, marketed as Full Self-Driving.
Mostly cited critically, as an example of a staged or cherry-picked self-driving demo and of misleading autonomy marketing.
6 comments from Hacker News
The Full Self Driving package is actually quite good. With the exception of going “hands free”, this is an accurate video on the current state of FSD: this video
> Telsa doesn't have such ultra-HD maps at all. They build some maps for some simulations and training but the car does not locate itself in such maps when driving. They do have such maps, but only for the routes of their demo videos. That’s the entire accusation — it’s a Fugazi. A man behind a curtain. A mechanical Turk. Fake. This video was posted 3 years ago: this video I have never seen a Tesla perform as well as the one in that video in ANY user video. I drove a Model 3 with FSD for 4 months and it never came close to performing that well. Not even close. They either recorded a special map for that scam video, drove the route a thousand times and took the best recording, or both. > This is certainty not what Tesla does, from Tesla vehicles you will find literally 1000s of videos uploaded by Testers on every possible routes In the real videos, the cars fail to navigate simple scenarios constantly. You can’t even watch the videos without cringing at the constant mistakes and dangerous maneuvers. For Pete’s sake, just search “Tesla phantom braking” on YouTube and behold. [LINK] [LINK] > And Tesla has also never relied on VC funding for any of its self-driving tech. No, just unsophisticated customers paying $12k for vaporware and massive government subsidies. So sorry — they’re not scamming VCs. Just real customers and the taxpayers.
Yes of course it is on you, that's why the driver in this case was found mostly responsible. The question is whether Tesla bears any additional responsibility, not whether they are solely at fault, which they obviously aren't. > Tesla infamously doesn't have a marketing team Come on, obviously they do marketing. "We don't have a marketing team" is itself marketing. Here's their most popular YouTube ad, for example: this video That video, which is called "Full Self-Driving" even though it came out when Autopilot was the only capability the cars had, was coincidentally released 3 days before the crash we're discussing. Do you think an ad like that, which simply shows the car driving itself and links to a page about Autopilot in the description, might lead someone to believe that Autopilot will do what the video shows? Again, remember that there was no separate FSD product at the time.
Here's the new self-driving demo video from today.[1] From Tesla's HQ in Palo Alto, out to I-280, down one exit, use interchange at Sand Hill to turn around, come back. No visible conflicting traffic on non-freeway streets. Compare the 2016 demo video.[2] That's a tougher route. That's the one where we now know it took a lot of tries to get a clean video. Waymo and Cruise have put up videos of their cars in city traffic. They get criticized for things like getting stuck behind double-parked cars, and being a bit shy of parked cars that project into a traffic lane. But they get where they are going. Tesla is not showing anything near that level. Supposedly the analysts at the meeting got to ride in a self-driving car. Anyone seen reports from them? [1] this video [2] [LINK]
Their marketing has lots of videos where they tout self-driving (calling it full self-driving or Autopilot) without any clarification it is a future promise. And then there is a feature on your Tesla called Autopilot you can click one I know if you are in the weeds you know the capabilities - but I think most people get the impression it can drive itself and its safe. And that impression is a direct result from marketing materials. Given the severity of car accidents it seems reasonable to be strict on these marketing claims, even if they call it a "beta" in the fine-print. this video