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Musk endeavours

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odysseus2000
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Re: Musk endeavours

#459025

Postby odysseus2000 » November 18th, 2021, 10:09 am

Musk speaking on Starship to the National Academies, his contribution starts at 6:49. There is some very interesting and technical discussions after his opening remarks:

https://livestream.com/accounts/7036396 ... =hootsuite

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Re: Musk endeavours

#459188

Postby odysseus2000 » November 19th, 2021, 8:58 am

I was surprised to learn that vertical wind turbines are able to harvest energy from cars passing by them. There is some controversity over how well this works but it looks to be an interesting concept that could, with storage, easily put lights on all uk motorways at no fuel cost. However, some test data suggests the available power is much greater than that & could be comparable to solar. There are several commentators who argue from theoretical considerations that the measured output power can not be right, so clearly either there is something wrong with the measurements or the theory, but it looks to be yet another example of how storage of electrical power is going to be very important, suggesting that this part of Tesla's business is seriously undervalued. Video here:

https://youtu.be/gcSnwW5v3f8

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Re: Musk endeavours

#459192

Postby odysseus2000 » November 19th, 2021, 9:12 am

New analyst upgrade:

https://twitter.com/DivesTech/status/14 ... 76356?s=20

Lots of comments that this market size is nonsense but this is I believe about what the market currently is:

https://twitter.com/expectingunexp1/sta ... 58659?s=20

although if lots of Chinese cars come and selling prices fall so does the turnover number.

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Re: Musk endeavours

#459274

Postby kiloran » November 19th, 2021, 1:09 pm

odysseus2000 wrote:I was surprised to learn that vertical wind turbines are able to harvest energy from cars passing by them.
Regards,

That could be a major breakthrough. Use the energy from the turbines to power under-the-road wireless charging for the cars. No more range anxiety :lol:

--kiloran

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Re: Musk endeavours

#459293

Postby odysseus2000 » November 19th, 2021, 1:55 pm

kiloran wrote:
odysseus2000 wrote:I was surprised to learn that vertical wind turbines are able to harvest energy from cars passing by them.
Regards,

That could be a major breakthrough. Use the energy from the turbines to power under-the-road wireless charging for the cars. No more range anxiety :lol:

--kiloran


Ha Ha!

Not that much power but if the measurements are right there is far more power by the sides of our roads than I had imagined.

Once I was broken down on the M6 and I was then surprised by how much draft there was from the passing vehicles, like being in a strong wind when the vehicles came by, so I am thinking the measurement might be reasonable. The company started with the idea of just powering motor way lights, but the measurements suggested that there was far more power than needed for lights and this tech can easily be scaled up to fit mobile masts were measurements also suggest there is similar power to that needed to run the mobile mast.

Clearly I have not made the measurements so everything is second hand and subject to many caveats but if the data is right this is a remarkable amount of power. Powering all the cellular masts in the UK must be a significant take from the national grid and it seems much of this can be avoided if this tech works.

The more research that goes into harvasting the natural world, essentially harvesting sunshine by various means, the more it looks like there is far more lost cost, free fuel, energy generation available in the UK than I imagined and this all points to the need for a shed load of batteries and if so one can expect analysts upgrades for battery and storage makers of which the leader is Tesla.

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Re: Musk endeavours

#459460

Postby BobbyD » November 20th, 2021, 3:40 am

Tesla app coming back online after server outage, Musk says


- https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodi ... 021-11-19/

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Re: Musk endeavours

#459517

Postby odysseus2000 » November 20th, 2021, 10:52 am

This is a super interesting 10 min 10 second video on what killed the first electric cars, well researched & accurate:

https://youtu.be/Xzu2EuaLOCY

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Re: Musk endeavours

#460084

Postby odysseus2000 » November 22nd, 2021, 12:41 pm

Alex Potter of Piper Sandler gives his view on Tesla (1.5 hours), very worth watching imho:

https://youtu.be/ln2czFNI6mk

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Re: Musk endeavours

#460269

Postby odysseus2000 » November 23rd, 2021, 10:36 am

All new buildings in UK will be required to have electric charging points in under 6 weeks:

https://cleantechnica.com/2021/11/22/uk ... g-in-2022/

Not sure if this includes private homes.

Also big hydrogen production facility, suggesting the backer had some good lobbyists!

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Re: Musk endeavours

#460304

Postby odysseus2000 » November 23rd, 2021, 1:07 pm

Third age of aviation, Rolls Royce electric plane breaks records:

https://youtu.be/kd-RDX1IjuM

More customers for Tesla batteries?

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Re: Musk endeavours

#460309

Postby odysseus2000 » November 23rd, 2021, 1:41 pm

Japan to double EV incentives to match Europe and US:

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Automo ... and-Europe

All good for Tesla cars!

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Re: Musk endeavours

#460413

Postby BobbyD » November 23rd, 2021, 9:48 pm

BERLIN, Nov 23 (Reuters) - Employees at Tesla's (TSLA.O) huge new factory near Berlin will elect a works council to represent their interests, a German trade union said on Tuesday.

The IG Metall trade union said seven employees had taken the first step towards setting up a works council, planning to choose an election committee on Nov. 29.


- https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/ ... 021-11-23/

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Re: Musk endeavours

#460490

Postby odysseus2000 » November 24th, 2021, 9:13 am

BobbyD wrote:
BERLIN, Nov 23 (Reuters) - Employees at Tesla's (TSLA.O) huge new factory near Berlin will elect a works council to represent their interests, a German trade union said on Tuesday.

The IG Metall trade union said seven employees had taken the first step towards setting up a works council, planning to choose an election committee on Nov. 29.


- https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/ ... 021-11-23/


Does this mean the employees will start to do some work making cars?

As things are a works council sounds like an oxymoron.

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Re: Musk endeavours

#460701

Postby odysseus2000 » November 24th, 2021, 9:51 pm

10.5 looks to be better:

https://youtu.be/4Jb-YJWFN-w

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Re: Musk endeavours

#460746

Postby odysseus2000 » November 25th, 2021, 8:38 am

This is an epic Munroe on what he sees as the future (46 mins) for BEV, legacy auto and geopolitics. If he is anything like right (and I believe he is) we are going into some extremely difficult times:

https://youtu.be/g63SJwFdGTQ

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Re: Musk endeavours

#460962

Postby onthemove » November 25th, 2021, 9:57 pm

odysseus2000 wrote:10.5 looks to be better:

https://youtu.be/4Jb-YJWFN-w

Regards,


Still a very long way to go though... (these videos should all start at the (ahem) 'interesting' points)

https://youtu.be/vqDOYq51AzE?t=112

https://youtu.be/vqDOYq51AzE?t=734
"That was terrible ... that was the worst thing I've ever seen in my life"

https://youtu.be/OcRZrAlLjNU?t=554

And, imv, the worst...
https://youtu.be/OcRZrAlLjNU?t=898
Twice it starts to pull out in front of approaching cars. The driver gives up with the FSD and decides to take the junction manually.

The problem that the Tesla still clearly has, is that it can be taking the same junction great a number of times, then out of the blue, completely fluffs it - sometimes dangerously so. Or in the case of that last video, there's clearly a subtle difference about that junction vs others that is causing the FSD to have serious problems with it - I mean, pulling out in front of moving vehicles level of serious ... I mean, as Elon Musk says, at it's most basic, driving is about not crashing... so how on earth is the Tesla at beta 10.5 not recognising that pulling out in front of those cars would almost certainly result in a real and proper crash!?

Tesla clearly have got a very long way to go before the car can confidently plot a good path. By confident, I don't just mean being 'assertive', I mean plotting a good path and confidently (and appropriately!) sticking to it. I'm talking here about situations where a human driver would be totally at ease and fully confident that the planned route is good, stable and totally unambiguous - i.e. where the road edges and markings are reasonably clear, and there are few if any potential curveballs (pedestrians or cars likely to pull out).

It's just way, way, wayyyyy to jumpy, and this, imv, explains why it can be taking the same junction fine many times, and then out of the blue completely fluffs it up.

The Tesla clearly doesn't have a robust 'awareness' of the environment around it, and clearly just small changes in light, or marginal changes in position, etc that wouldn't make any material difference to a human's interpretation of the world around the car, clearly make big differences in how the Tesla interprets what's around it, even when a human seeing the same view would be totally relaxed and confident in their understanding of the world around the car.

I must admit, it's fascinating watching these videos... I seem to be hooked on watching a few of the Tesla owner's channels now, and youtube seems to have recognised this putting their videos at the very top of my home page each time they release a new one :)

But let's be realistic - these have a long way to go yet before Tesla could consider releasing what anyone would reasonably call a 'self driving' update to the general public.

A couple of elephants in the room that get over looked in the videos are the two 'interventions' that Tesla has very cleverly got everyone not counting as interventions...

Specifically the need to tap the accelerator to tell the car it's safe to go. In the videos, the drivers seem to do this frequently where the car isn't confident enough to move (or move assertively enough), but the drivers never seem to view these as 'interventions'. Yet if the driver weren't in the driving seat, where would that leave the car!?

I mean, just think about that for a minute... we can see situations where the drivers are having to intervene because the car is doing something dangerous or illegal, yet at other times, the car is too unsure whether to go or not. Just think about that ... on the one hand, the car is doing dangerous things some times, and at other times it doesn't have the confidence to take what should be easy and safe manoeuvres. To me this is just reinforcing that the car doesn't have a good 'model' of the world around the vehicle and how to drive in that model world.

The other one being the speed... it still seems like the drivers are 'dialling' in the 'cruising' speed because the car often wouldn't be going the speed the driver thinks is appropriate (sometimes faster, sometimes slower). But let's get real here... driving is just two things ... speed and direction... if the driver is having to provide input as to the speed, then that needs considering as an intervention. You can't have a full self driving car needing someone to keep adjusting the appropriate cruising speed - the car needs to decide that! (To be fair, I don't consider the choice of driving style, that you set for the whole ride, to be in that category)

When evaluating how well FSD is doing, any input at all that is required, needs to be viewed as an intervention, even if it doesn't result in the blue 'self driving' icon considering it a disengagement.

One final one that you might be interested in...

Waymo vs Tesla (10.4)!

https://youtu.be/1BsWFzgUBQY

Same start location and destination.

My observations would be...

- the Waymo had to deal with emergency services dealing with an accident, which the Tesla didn't encounter. And the Waymo correctly identified the emergency vehicles and their lights, etc.

- the Tesla driver admitted they had to press the accelerator (near the end) to make the Tesla go - it wasn't moving of it's own accord. To me, that should have been a fail - there was no-one in the Waymo to press the accelerator!

The video seems to compare the times, but I think this is rather unfair. The Waymo doesn't have any safety driver at all monitoring continuously ready to press the brakes if it does something dangerous (as was needed in a couple of the Tesla videos above!). The Waymos do have the ability to contact base, but Waymo base aren't monitoring them real time ready to hit the brakes if it does something stupid - the car has to come safely to a stop all by itself before the Waymo team can intervene remotely - and as the JJ Ricks videos showed, when base do intervene they call up the passengers to tell them that they are doing so (iirc I've seen two such instances where the Waymo required base to intervene), and they take a little time to evaluate the situation of the car before deciding how to proceed. They're definitely not 'in the (remote) driving seat' so to speak!

I mention this, because clearly the Tesla can be running far more assertively, and be taking far more risks, because at all times, if it stuffs up, there's a human there ready to hit the brakes.

So the presenter's stated aim to test 'which gets there quicker' is a little naïve and unfair in my view. If you want to make it fair, take the Tesla driver out of the driving seat. With the driver in the driving seat, all you are testing is Tesla FSD as a driver assistance technology - where it can take more risks and be more assertive - not a self driving technology. So of course the Tesla is likely to get there quicker.

It really can't be stressed enough that the Waymo's geofencing isn't a restriction or limitation compared to Tesla...

Absolutely the opposite ... Waymo's geofencing in allowing it to do something - operate without a safety driver - that Tesla cannot do anywhere.

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Re: Musk endeavours

#461004

Postby odysseus2000 » November 26th, 2021, 12:27 am

Hi onthemove,

I concur.

Having to do something in a Tesla is an intervention.

It really can't be stressed enough that the Waymo's geofencing isn't a restriction or limitation compared to Tesla...

Absolutely the opposite ... Waymo's geofencing in allowing it to do something - operate without a safety driver - that Tesla cannot do anywhere.


Yes, excellent point.

My observation of many Tesla video is that Tesla self driving works best when the road markings are good. This was a point made a long time ago on this board that at the time I dismissed. Munroe has also re-iterated the point. I think its clear that the Tesla's system works best on well marked roads and I can remember when I was learning to drive that I much preferred to have good lane markings and I didn't like tarmac that had been freshly laid and was waiting for its markings. With more experience lane markings mattered less but it seems that at the stage Tesla is at, that lane markings are important to it. With good lane markings it tends to progress sensibly, but when the lane markings are poor or non existent it struggles. However, this is only part of Tesla's problem. The inability to find unambiguous route solutions and to have weights for the ones that are determined that are similar leads to the bad behaviour seen in the videos. If Tesla are to have robotics taxes then they need software that is a lot better than humans.

According to this:

https://www.bankrate.com/insurance/car/ ... tatistics/

in 2020 people in the US drove 2830 billion miles and there were 42060 fatal car crashes, or 42060/2830e9 = 14e-9 fatalities per mile. To be 10x better they need about 4206 crashes for the same 2830 billion miles.

In 2019 there were about 21,000 fatalities due to alcohol, speed and with pedestrians out of a total of 36,835. If alcohol, speed and pedestrian deaths can be avoided that would reduce the figure to 36,835- 21,000 = 15,835, still well shy of the 3684 needed to get the number down by 90%, but still worth having.

My guess is that many of the 15,835 deaths were due to lack of attention which a working AI should be able to fix if it can be made to avoid the "lack of attention" problems that are clear in many of the Tesla videos.

As of now, from these videos, it is clear that Waymo are ahead of Tesla and that the Tesla weighting algorithm is not sufficiently weighting safe routes away from unsafe ones and that it is currently worse than a human driver.

My guess is that the software will exceed human capabilities and before too long, but I do not know if the software is currently just needing refinement of if the sensor suite is not good enough. If it is software then perhaps neuromorphic chips with their mimicking of the human brain and low power consumption, may be needed:

https://youtu.be/BDrrjLB7lgE

There is no question in my mind that Tesla fsd is getting better but I do not know how much better it can get and as of now it isn't good enough, but with exponential phenomenon massive improvements can happen very quickly. We live in amazing times.

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Re: Musk endeavours

#461176

Postby BobbyD » November 26th, 2021, 2:11 pm

BERLIN, Nov 26 (Reuters) - Tesla (TSLA.O) has withdrawn its application for state funding for its planned battery factory near Berlin, the electric vehicle maker said on Friday, adding that construction plans were unchanged.

The European Union in January approved a plan that included giving state aid to Tesla, BMW (BMWG.DE) and others to support production of electric vehicle batteries and help the bloc to reduce imports from industry leader China.

Tesla was expected to receive 1.14 billion euros ($1.28 billion) in EU funding for its battery plant in Gruenheide, Brandenburg under the plan, with a final decision likely by the end of the year.

The U.S. carmaker did not say why it had withdrawn its application for funding. The company is itself investing 5 billion euros in the battery plant, according to German economy ministry estimates.


- https://www.reuters.com/business/autos- ... 021-11-26/

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Re: Musk endeavours

#461409

Postby onthemove » November 27th, 2021, 2:09 pm

odysseus2000 wrote:There is no question in my mind that Tesla fsd is getting better but I do not know how much better it can get and as of now it isn't good enough, but with exponential phenomenon massive improvements can happen very quickly.


Development like FSD is the opposite of exponential - or rather the exponential is working against progress rather than helping.

I mean, take for example that video I linked where the Tesla wanted to pull out in front of an approaching car.

The driver tried to explain it by saying the approaching road isn't straight, so the cars are coming from a little further left than normal.

To be honest, I'm doubtful that that was simply the reason in that case, but it's good to illustrate my point...

Something about that junction was subtly different which has meant that what works normally, this time didn't.

But stop and think about that for a while... just think how subtle the difference was, and then try to think how many other variations you might encounter... not just in slight differences in the approach angle of the road, but also lighting conditions, weather conditions, what line approaching cars are taking and also what type and size of cars they might be.

This is the issue - the more you try to account for these less common situations, the more you realise that there are bleeping loads of them!

And this is what I mean about the 'exponential' working against you. To get basic driving .. e.g. simple, nice straight give ways, etc, with regular cars, are probably relatively 'easy' to manage. And that might get you 90% of the way there. But to get the next 5% of the way there now requires a huge increase in development effort compared to the prior 90%. And then the next even just 2% probably requires substantially more again.

Rather than being exponential, progress is more likely to be a logarithmic pattern...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Logarithm_plots.png

And intuitively that fits as well, because clearly no-one expects cars to reach a point where they race to the FSD finish... they're never going to be perfect... as I think everyone accepts, what is most important is getting them better than people. If the progress were exponential, the closer you get to perfecting FSD the quicker your progress would be, and you'd be slam dunk home with a perfect driver. Clearly that isn't anything like realistic!

Which does raise an interesting point from here on in with self driving cars....

How do you decide that it's 'ready'?

The FSD 10.5 beta testers seem quite happy, and you seem to be impressed.

But let's just consider the collection of videos that we've posted between us in this thread on 10.5. There's what 5 or 6 videos, covering roughly the same amount of journeys.

And in those videos, if the driver hadn't been there, there was the potential for at least one car to come off at a corner likely damaging the car quite badly (though the occupant would probably be OK, just a little shaken), but another incident where it was likely the car would have moved into the path of an approaching vehicle and been hit quite hard. Likely quite a more serious accident resulting in some degree of injury or worse.

Let's imagine... if Tesla decided this 10.5 was good to go and rolled it out to however many Tesla's there are out there. And told owners that they could leave the driver's seat unoccupied and sit in the back and go to sleep.

If every Tesla driver uses there car for more than just a couple of miles a couple of times a week, within possibly 1 to 2 months, probably almost every Tesla out there would likely as a bare minimum have had a bump of some sort requiring fixing in a garage. There'd be unlikely any undamaged Tesla's out there.

And a not insignificant proportion of owners would probably have suffered injury or even death as a result of the FSD.

When you think about it like this, it becomes clear why Tesla are only even releasing FSD beta as a 'driver assistance' aid to only a select number of owners.

But back to my point...

With the progress being more logarithmic than exponential, how do Tesla get from here, to releasing a proper self driving - 'hands off the wheel' - as per Waymo?

Clearly, any self driving car, is still going to need some interaction, even if just to ask the riders where they want the car to park - e.g. which driveway, etc. In these cases the car can still determine what's safe, and it could just ask a passenger without a driver's licence which of the safe options the passenger wants. So this isn't what I'm talking about in deciding whether to release an FSD.

I'm talking about the criteria for deciding whether the software can be trusted enough to roll out to millions of owners, such that they could go to sleep on the journey.

With the smaller and smaller each time increments in functionality - coupled with the risk that changes could break prior functionality - what's the road map from here?

On the Tesla videos on youtube, it's still a case of disengagements (or driver inputs) per journey, rather than jouney's before disengagement.

And this is just a select few showing only their journeys.

As already mentioned in my previous posts, I've used the analogy of building a skyscraper, and I believe that Waymo have targeted a much taller skyscraper, so to speak, with their approach and architecture so I believe that Waymo are less likely to suffer from the ever diminishing returns before they hit something 'acceptable' - they'll still be on a steeper upward part of the curve when they reach 'acceptable'. In fact that's probably how they already got the geofenced operation without anyone behind the wheel... because they targetted well beyond what was needed for the geofenced area, so while they're still targeting much further ('higher') elsewhere, it was probably pretty clear to Waymo it was 'good enough' to release in nice dry, large roads, low volume of traffic Pheonix.

But to Tesla... presumably when Tesla releases FSD 'final release', it will be expected to go to a large number of owners (as to how many that is, you'll know the number better than I do! :D ), but presumably the expectation will be in the region of less than 1 disengagement (i.e. without driver that would mean accident!) per millions of journeys!

But just think about it... think about all those enthusiasts videos on you tube... how many excited youtube Tesla owners will need to be pumping out video after video after video, proclaiming "hey no disengagements!"... before you could have confidence that Tesla's wouldn't have any disengagements in millions of journeys?

There's going to be a lot of bored, frustrated Tesla FSD beta testers putting out youtube videos complaining "come on Tesla, surely this is ready to release now!?"

I mean, Tesla aren't going to release FSD final release just because one guy on youtube had his first drive without any disengagements!

And when you think about it like this, it really does give an idea how far Tesla still have to go yet, before they could realistically consider releasing FSD properly.

But to Tesla's credit, I will say one thing...

"I think its clear that the Tesla's system works best on well marked roads"


I actually disagree with this.

I think Tesla's 'gung-ho' approach to self driving, which I generally don't like as a general principle, does give them one advantage.

I actually think Tesla will probably 'cope' 'better' with obscured roads and non-existent road markings. Things like roads covered in leaves, or roads covered in snow and such like. At least in terms of deciding where the road should be.

Already in some of Tesla videos, the owners have already tested them in these scenarios, and even though the car (particularly in snow) really doesn't seem to have been developed to handle snow yet - it sure as hell ain't adjusting it's speed to suit! - but to give the Tesla some credit, it does still seem to be able to infer where the edge of the road is likely to be.

I mean, true, just like a human driver in such conditions, it's probably winging it to a large extent!

But Waymo on the other hand seem to be more focussed on robust recognition of what's around the vehicle. Really making sure, with the lidar, etc, that it is confident in what it's 'seeing'.

Waymo's approach is great for normal driving conditions, where the road surface is visible.

But my expectation is that Waymo will probably find obscured road surfaces, and poor road markings / poor road surfaces, more of a problem than Tesla would - at least in terms of deciding what route the car is expected to take - though I suspect Waymo will be better at knowing how to drive in those situations (e.g. recognising snow and the need to slow down, etc), even though Tesla would likely be better at deciding where the edge of the road is.

That's not to say that Waymo, by targeting a stronger foundation for a higher skyscraper, won't be able to deal with these situations.

Similarly it's quite plausible that the thing that I believe is working to Tesla's advantage in these situations is perhaps what's hobbling Tesla in normal situations.

I mean, in my view Tesla might are trying to be too general - I think this is why Musk refuses to consider geofenced areas, etc - and this is perhaps why it's struggling, e.g. to get into the correct lane for turns, etc. I mean, you can tell from the Tesla visualisations that it often is unsure where the edge of the road is, even in clear situations that Waymo has absolutely no problem with. And that I believe is because Tesla is trying to be quite broad and general in it's road edge (and lane) determination, and that's undermining it in some situations where if you took Waymo's more thorough approach of detecting what's around the vehicle, detecting the edge and lanes should be easy.

In essence, in my view, Tesla is more of a jack of all trades when it comes to detecting the edge of the road, but a master of none.

In other words, when the road is clear, and the markings are clear, then I believe that Waymo has a clear lead vs Tesla.

But once the markings are almost gone, or substantially obstructed by leaves or washed over with mud, etc, I suspect at the moment Waymo's capability probably will drop off quite rapidly (I mean when it gets extreme), where Tesla might still manage an 'adequate' job of doing something 'acceptable' - though whether it would moderate it's behaviour to drive more slowly to adapt to the risk of things (stones, rocks, potholes, etc) potentially being hidden or potentially the poorer traction of such a surface, I very much have my doubts from the Tesla videos I've seen so far!

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Re: Musk endeavours

#461417

Postby Howard » November 27th, 2021, 3:25 pm

I drove to central London and back yesterday. During the tube strike. Park Lane, Hyde Park Corner, Hammersmith and the M4.

It is inconceivable to me that a Tesla on FSD would ever handle that sort of traffic. Cars muscling in from both sides, taxis doing U turns in Knightsbridge, bus lanes with faded white line markers. Pedestrians nipping across the road from all angles and a plethora of motor scooter and motor bikes weaving in and out. Selecting the correct lane in advance needed knowledge built up from knowing the road.

The Model 3 I have driven had difficulty in correctly registering one incident on a clear motorway.

No video of a Tesla on FSD has ever got close to recording a drive round Hyde Park corner in yesterday's conditions.

regards

Howard


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