At this point, why anyone would opt to buy a Tesla is beyond my understanding.
The fact that regulation is lacking to such an extent as to allow Tesla to wait for airbag deployment for something to count as a crash is kind of sad.
csomar · 2m ago
The Y/3 models are relatively decent and well priced (even competitively priced to the Chinese models). That's 90% of their sales.
NoPicklez · 4h ago
Well because Tesla's are excellent cars and are still ranked at the top compared to the rest of the market.
The only part I don't know why people would trust is the FSD/Autopilot of which I wouldn't recommend people to buy. But as an EV its an excellent car.
These studies don't really show a decent comparison between EV's, just car makers in general. We aren't trying to argue whether Tesla's are better than ICE car makers, but whether they're consistent or better against other EV's of other car makers.
However, if you look at the latest press release by JDPower (https://www.jdpower.com/business/press-releases/2025-us-vehi...) you'll see that Tesla now ranks right near the average. Significantly better than in previous years and ahead of other common car makers.
The dependability study could do with a segment purely on EV's, given that EV's as a whole are improving by roughly 33 PP100 per year.
csomar · 9m ago
> Tesla's are excellent cars and are still ranked at the top compared to the rest of the market.
> you'll see that Tesla now ranks right near the average. Significantly better than in previous years and ahead of other common car makers.
nindalf · 3h ago
Your link calls out Tesla in particular as “Note: Brand is not rank eligible because it does not meet study award criteria.”
You are citing a study that specifically excludes Tesla. And even then you’re bragging about Tesla being … average?
NoPicklez · 2h ago
I used the same links as the commenter above, of which I cited a more recent study and shows that Tesla isn’t as bad as they perhaps used to be.
If they really wanted to exclude them they wouldn’t have included them all.
I cited the study, because it was the same study commented above where the most recent study wasn’t mentioned.
I’m not bragging at all, but they’re just not as bad of a car as some people are giving them a wrap for. Heck they had the same number of problem reported as Ford, does that mean Fords are bad cars? No.
Gareth321 · 2h ago
It depends on the segment and time range and market. MotorEasy conducted a survey in 2024 in the U.K. with 29,967 respondents. (https://www.whatcar.com/news/most-reliable-cars/n27337) The Tesla Model Y was the 9th (equal) most reliable car. However Teslas tend to fare poorly in the Consumer Reports survey in the U.S. I suspect one of the reasons for the discrepancy between this market and the U.S. is that the U.K. received Tesla shipments a lot later for new models - years, in fact. This gave Tesla time to iron out first-model issues. Another is potentially the location of manufacture. Most Teslas sold in the U.K. come from China and Germany. Most Teslas sold in the U.S. come from Fremont, California. There were widespread reports of strange manufacturing practises at the Fremont plan during the covid outbreak, like spray-painting cars in makeshift tents.
Interestingly, MotorEasy found that gas and hybrids were the most reliable. Diesel were the least reliable.
timewizard · 2h ago
I dislike Tesla as a brand; however, they're not particularly lacking considering their size and price point. JD Power's "ratings" are almost entirely based on surveys and are essentially worthless.
mistercheph · 2h ago
Bruh, JD Power is a joke, they said the Chevy Equinox is the most reliable compact SUV of 2024, look at any of their rankings, it’s all basically random, meaningless noise.
I assume they just create hundreds of oveRlapping categories to make sure everyone has something they will pay the license fee to talk about in a commercial
bobsomers · 4h ago
They're not actually that great of an EV anymore. The build quality is lackluster and the ride on the Model 3 in particular is quite harsh.
Some of the comments I hear almost universally from prior Model 3 owners when they switch to an Ioniq 5 is how much nicer the ride quality is and how nice it is to have buttons on the dash again.
NoPicklez · 4h ago
The new Model 3 released in Jan 2024 has resolved the ride harshness
nindalf · 3h ago
Is this like how Full Self Driving is always 12 months away? All the shortcomings of the Tesla you know and hate were solved in the latest model!
NoPicklez · 3h ago
It’s nothing like that.
There have been comments around the ride harshness of the model 3. In the latest model it has been specifically fixed.
I think any self driving tech at the moment is just terrible and shouldn’t be used, for the record
hkpack · 2h ago
Should all the current owners are expected to be happy for the new version they did’t own?
Toutouxc · 40m ago
No, but prospective buyers don't need to worry about ride harshness anymore.
hkpack · 14m ago
Should prospective customers read your comment and think "thanks god, I finally can buy this car now"?
I think Elon found a glitch it tech-bro reasoning: you promise a product, people believe you and buy it, then they realise that it is not what was advertised, but it is OK, because new version has it now, so you can't complain, it is your fault in the eyes of your peers, you should have made a better research or whatever.
Rinse and repeat. And the most surprising thing is that it is working. People still haven't got what they paid for a decade ago, and this is considered to be OK.
Your FSD has almost got you killed? Don't worry, this is your fault, and anyway the bug was already fixed in the update. Probably. This time for sure.
Gareth321 · 2h ago
No it's pretty good now. This isn't a software update. It's either softer or it's not. Of course it is subjective. There are plenty of cars with even softer rides, but they tend to feel a lot more floaty, especially in corners, and I personally don't like that.
LightBug1 · 13m ago
Still ugly af. Wouldn't touch it. The only well designed car ever made was the model S, and even that is long in the tooth now and was due a refresh 5 years ago. But CYbeRtrUck ...
Combine that with FSD rubbish bait and switch, nutjob CEO, and the cratering of any brand goodwill ... I won't touch those cars if you paid me (seriously).
And honestly, I recognise the innate progression of the technology ... but others have caught and surpassed to the point that I don't have to worry about buying the lesser car anymore when I go elsewhere.
_s_a_m_ · 4h ago
is that you again Elmo?
sirdvd · 2h ago
> Well because Tesla's are excellent cars and are still ranked at the top compared to the rest of the market.
I wouldn’t know but I was speaking on behalf of the model 3/Y.
It’s easy to pick the worst model of the lot and use it to disregard the entire brand, but I can’t expect any more critical thought from some online
guappa · 2h ago
> I can’t expect any more critical thought from some online
Thank you for contributing to lower the overall amount of critical thinking on the internet.
neepi · 4h ago
I don't understand it either. Anybody I know recently in the UK only got one for political reasons or to stick it to the system in some naive way. I wish I was joking. This is even more sad.
pavlov · 3h ago
These are the same people who are staunchly opposed to regulating emissions in any way.
So in a way it’s great that they’ve been convinced to buy zero-emissions vehicles by giving them a reactionary edgelord option that’s just like every other EV. (Except for the suicide FSD mode which is more like a Darwin awards filter.)
Gareth321 · 2h ago
As someone who recently bought a Tesla, nothing comes close for the price to the Model Y in terms of range, performance, trunk space, and software. If you want an EV and value those things, the Model Y is the clear choice.
MagicMoonlight · 1h ago
Ioniq 5
Teslas don’t even have a Speedo, let alone a HUD. It’s just an iPad with proprietary software which can’t sync with your phone. Terrible
Gareth321 · 47m ago
I'll compare the top spec Ioniq 5 N line with the Model Y AWD Long Range as they're priced the same here in Denmark. The Ioniq has 520 liters of trunk space vs 854 in the Model Y. The Ioniq has 495km of range vs the Y's 586. Software isn't even close - I have tried both. The Tesla wins hands down on software. The only metric the Ioniq wins on is acceleration. Specifically when using special boost mode from stopped. It can do 0-100 in 3.4s vs the Y's 4.8s, which is fast.
For me this is a clear win for Tesla. Anything under 5s is crazy fast to me anyway, so the other things I mention are worth a lot more.
seb1204 · 1h ago
What do you want to sync?
I was able to use my phone book contacts and addresses. Use my phone's WiFi for data and play music or videos from any app on my phone.
I was able to send destination POI to the car GPS to navigate there. Ticked all my boxes.
Bidirectional charging would be great, everything else is already far up there.
Toutouxc · 36m ago
Well TMY is really efficient for the size, while I've seen hilarious consumption figures for Ioniq 5. Doesn't matter if you charge from solar, but at European electricity prices, TMY is probably significantly cheaper to run.
cebert · 37m ago
I purchased a 2026 Model Y in April. I love it and it’s the best vehicle I’ve even owned. My Apple phone pairs with the car just fine. I can call my contacts, play audio from my phone etc.
randomcarbloke · 54m ago
Boot-space is literally all it has going for it, you can equal or surpass the other categories for less here in Europe, and if you buy used since used EV's are dirt cheap you could get something significantly better with far better badge-appeal for about the same price.
Gareth321 · 45m ago
I have a family and a wife who doesn't pack light so it's a pretty important one for us. There are options if I'm willing to drop some of those things, but the Y gives me all of it for a reasonable price.
Do you mean I could get something significantly better if I choose not to get the things which are important to me? Because that would be worse for me, not better. I have never cared about the badge.
Out of interest, if I reduced the trunk space a little, which similarly priced EVs could you recommend with more range and better performance than the Model Y AWD Long Range?
tpxl · 37m ago
What gets at least equal mileage and is also not tiny? A friend is looking to buy and EV, and his problem specifically is nothing comes close to Teslas range.
wilg · 2h ago
I love my Model Y and would love to buy the new one, but unfortunately the CEO is a fascist traitor and is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children. I feel bad for all the engineers and designers who did such great work only to have it put at risk in this way.
Gareth321 · 40m ago
That sounds like unbelievable hyperbole but I'm not interested in getting into a culture war fight today. It's going to be hard to find a brand which hasn't been associated with bad things before but I wish you luck :)
mavhc · 35m ago
And every other car company faked their emission results, so are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children
thrance · 2h ago
Vice signalling? They are the best way to advertise to the world that you hate minorities.
para_parolu · 5h ago
Can’t say for everyone but there are not many alternatives with similar features on us market
seanhunter · 4h ago
That may have been true 4 years ago but it’s far from true now. The only feature Tesla has that no other car seems to have is that minimalist “dentist’s waiting room decorated in the 1990s to seem futuristic” energy from the interior, which definitely sets Tesla apart although not entirely in a good way.
UberFly · 4h ago
I get the feeling you didn't actually read the article.
qwertox · 1h ago
> saying that public disclosure of the information could cause competitive harm.
Remember what Musk said many years ago, something along the lines of that he wants to get the global EV movement started, and that for this to happen he'd gladly let anyone use his patents without retaliating?
Now he doesn't even want data which might save lives to get out into the public.
> June 12, 2014
> Yesterday, there was a wall of Tesla patents in the lobby of our Palo Alto headquarters. That is no longer the case. They have been removed, in the spirit of the open source movement, for the advancement of electric vehicle technology.
> Tesla Motors was created to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport. If we clear a path to the creation of compelling electric vehicles, but then lay intellectual property landmines behind us to inhibit others, we are acting in a manner contrary to that goal.
Unless there's a very good reason, if National Highway Transportation Safety Administration has it then the taxpayers who paid for it should have access too.
e44858 · 10h ago
Provided they release crash data for all manufacturers and don't single out just one manufacturer.
ra7 · 10h ago
Crash data for all other ADAS systems is already public [1]. The only manufacturer with heavily redacted information in that data to the point of being useless is Tesla.
>and the crash involves a vulnerable road user being struck or results in a fatality, an air bag deployment, or any individual being transported to a hospital for medical treatment.
For example, in the case of BMW, in every single case the field for ADS/ADAS Version is either blank or redacted.
ra7 · 8h ago
No serious analysis can be done when we can’t even tell if a crash occurred under FSD Supervised or Autopilot because they’re two very different things with different capabilities. Same with withholding software/hardware versions and narrative of events.
Tesla also has a problem of their telematics underreporting crashes. One of the reasons for that is they don’t consider it a crash if airbags don’t deploy. This was called out by the NHTSA in a prior investigation: https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/inv/2022/INCR-EA22002-14496.pdf.
Here’s the relevant paragraph from that report:
> Gaps in Tesla's telematic data create uncertainty regarding the actual rate at which vehicles operating with Autopilot engaged are involved in crashes. Tesla is not aware of every crash involving Autopilot even for severe crashes because of gaps in telematic reporting. Tesla receives telematic data from its vehicles, when appropriate cellular connectivity exists and the antenna is not damaged during a crash, that support both crash notification and aggregation of fleet vehicle mileage. Tesla largely receives data for crashes only with pyrotechnic deployment, which are a minority of police reported crashes.
jmpman · 8h ago
One is a paid version where Tesla opts to drive safer, and if you don’t pay then Tesla is allowed to drive more dangerously? Seems like a jury would question why Tesla would allow a version that is known to be less safe.
bumby · 8h ago
Literally what Boeing did with their software upgrade to read the (already installed) second AOA indicator
armsaw · 8h ago
When I look at this data, I see the type of self driving in use, as well as the written narrative of every crash, along with several other fields as REDACTED FOR BUSINESS REASONS, only for Tesla vehicles, where every other manufacturer seems to have these fields populated. To me, that information would be crucial to understanding what actually happened in each case, as opposed to only being able to understand some of the ambient conditions around each accident.
andsoitis · 8h ago
> REDACTED FOR BUSINESS REASONS, only for Tesla vehicles, where every other manufacturer seems to have these fields populated.
Not true. There are many rows for other manufacturers where fields are redacted or blank.
For example:
- Row 7. BMW. ADAS/ADS Version: blank
- Row 8. BMW. ADAS/ADS Version: redacted
- Row 9. Subaru. ADAS/ADS Version: redacted
etc.
armsaw · 8h ago
Granted there are some other rows with missing or incomplete information, but Tesla appears to be the only manufacturer for which this information is withheld in every single instance without exception.
andsoitis · 8h ago
> Granted there are some other rows with missing or incomplete information, but Tesla appears to be the only manufacturer for which this information is withheld in every single instance without exception.
Again, not true.
I just filtered for BMW, and in every single instance, without fail, the ADS/ADAS Version cell is either redacted or blank.
I didn't check other manufacturers.
zimpenfish · 5h ago
Did a quick check and yeah, there's a lot of redaction/blanks in `ADAS/ADS System Version`
Rpts RdBl Pcage Entity
48 12 25.00 Ford Motor Company
18 6 33.33 Rivian Automotive, LLC
10 4 40.00 Volkswagen Group of America, Inc.
29 12 41.38 Mercedes-Benz USA, LLC
38 18 47.37 Lucid USA, Inc.
27 15 55.56 Hyundai Motor America
37 22 59.46 Kia America, Inc.
6 4 66.67 APTIV
6 5 83.33 Porsche Cars North America, Inc.
12 10 83.33 Daimler Trucks North America, LLC
159 156 98.11 Honda (American Honda Motor Co.)
126 124 98.41 Subaru of America, Inc.
3003 3001 99.93 Tesla, Inc.
1 1 100.00 Nuro
2 2 100.00 Mazda North American Operations
6 6 100.00 Chrysler (FCA US, LLC)
71 71 100.00 BMW of North America, LLC
genewitch · 2h ago
7 manufacturers don't have that field populated with useful information. I consider 124 out of 126 reports redacted or blank to be close enough to "every single instance" for this argument, for example. Furthermore, over half have over half blank or redacted, and the lowest is 25% missing info.
I don't own nor do I want to own a Tesla, but stuff like this is what gets reported and the corrections or actual facts get buried in the resulting noise. I don't really even care that this is about tesla, even.
If this was some sort of rendering or CSV error on your part, then that could happen at CBS or msnbc just as easily, and tomorrow the headlines scream "Tesla only automaker shirking reporting responsibilities"
duxup · 10h ago
I agree, although that's more about the request(er) than anything else.
FireBeyond · 10h ago
Uhh, WaPo was requesting crash data from NHTSA on driver assistance systems. Tesla is the only manufacturer trying to prevent that disclosure.
timewizard · 2h ago
The owner or their next of kin ostensibly should have it as well. It's disappointing that only the manufacturer and the NHTSA have easy access.
mosdl · 10h ago
Wife has a relative who was just (this weekend) in a major accident where a tesla ran into them and pushed their a ditch where it rolled a few times. Initial report says the Tesla was in self drive mode. Will be interesting to see who was at fault here but so far it is not looking good for Tesla.
andsoitis · 9h ago
> ran into them and pushed their a ditch where it rolled a few times
that sounds rough; hopefully they're OK! did the car drive into them from the side or from behind?
where did it happen? googling "Tesla ditch self-driving accident" turns up nothing, but I would have thought it would have made the news.
wskinner · 8h ago
There are over 40,000 _fatal_ car crashes per year in the US, and a few orders of magnitude more non-fatal crashes. Most of them do not make the news.
genewitch · 2h ago
A plurality of those are in Texas, as well. I used to say, someone in the US is more likely to die in a car wreck in Texas even if they never go to Texas, that's how skewed they make the statistics. But I stopped looking at the stats a few years ago so I stopped saying and defending that. It's just a new lens to view this information through.
Anecdotally, the huge trucks and driving culture (aggressive, fast) would have made me guess Texas has higher deaths before seeing the data.
meepmorp · 46m ago
what is up with Mississippi? it's second for "deaths per 100mil miles" as well.
jfoster · 8h ago
For stories like this, I think it's usually just a small sample that end up making the news.
gamblor956 · 8h ago
Self driving Teslas getting into accidents is now so common that it is no longer news.
philosophty · 9h ago
Seems like culpability should come down to whether or not the Telsa driver could have prevented the accident.
Although there's a good argument to be made that Tesla's entire system has fundamental design flaws which they have negligently disregarded.
irjustin · 9h ago
To me anything less than true level 4 should remain with the driver.
I also believe that marketing it as FSD should be liable and scrutinized as a level 4 system. Because when you hear FSD, the public naturally thinks the abilities marked in level 4 arguably even 5.
Dylan16807 · 5h ago
Until the car requests intervention and the timer runs out, levels 3 and 4 are supposed to have the same behavior. If that process has not happened, why should the driver's level of responsibility be any different?
(Though a consequence is that levels 3 and 4 are very close together in difficulty. We might not see many level 3 cars.)
jeffreygoesto · 4h ago
Volvo was visionary and dismissed Level 3 in about 2014 for being too dangerous. Basically the car drives until it doesn't and you may suddenly die because the time to get the situation and react is too short. Level 3 way purely for managers to claim it would be a linear progression whereas it is petty much THE gorge of automated driving. If you look at the SAE table it's just a little blue wart in a green column, but it's a lethal one.
> because the time to get the situation and react is too short
The time is up to the manufacturer, isn't it?
Mercedes uses 10 seconds right now and that seems pretty good to me. At that point I know it can't be too dire or the car would have already emergency stopped.
close04 · 2h ago
> The time is up to the manufacturer, isn't it?
The time depends on how quickly an event unfolds in traffic. You can't guarantee 10s notice for an event that is imminent in 2s and the system might not be able to handle or can't detect.
The car could become temporarily "blind" for some reason with just 4-5s to brake before a collision. It's enough for a human driver even considering reaction time. But it's impossible to guarantee a minimum time without the ability to predict every issue that will happen on the road.
Dylan16807 · 2h ago
If there isn't a guaranteed minimum time, then it's not level 3, it's advanced level 2. Level 3 needs to be able to handle very rapid events by itself.
If it becomes "blind" because of an unexpected total system failure, that's an exception to the guarantee just like your transmission suddenly exploding is an exception. It had better be extremely rare. If it happens regularly then it needs a recall.
close04 · 2h ago
> If there isn't a guaranteed minimum time
When dealing with unpredictable real life events there are no guarantees, unless we're considering the many carveouts to that definition from a legal perspective. A blind car (fluke weather, blown fuse, SW glitch, trolley problem) can no longer guarantee anything. Giving the driver 10s, or assuming the worst and braking hard could equally cause a crash.
> your transmission suddenly exploding is an exception
As long as the brakes or steering work a driver could still avoid a crash. The driver having a stroke is closer to a blind car.
Dylan16807 · 2h ago
> When dealing with unpredictable real life events there are no guarantees
The guarantee here is that the human isn't obligated to intervene for a moment.
If you call that guarantee impossible, then what about level 4 cars? They guarantee that the human isn't obligated to intervene ever. Are level 4 cars impossible?
Is this a wording issue? What would you say level 4 cars promise/provide? Level 3 cars need to promise/provide the same thing for a limited time. And that time has to be long enough to do a proper transfer of attention.
close04 · 1h ago
> The guarantee here is that the human isn't obligated to intervene for a moment.
Ah, understood. So the guarantee is that the driver is not legally responsible for anything that happens in those 10s. I always took that as a guarantee of safety rather than from legal consequences.
Dylan16807 · 1h ago
It's more about safety than legality. But with the understanding that nothing is perfect.
The guarantee is that you will be very safe and you can go ahead and look away from the road and pay attention to other things. But at most this is as good as a level 4 or 5 car, not an impossibly perfect car.
Yeul · 1h ago
If you're drinking coffee or reading emails your reaction speed can be way too long to react.
Which makes me think: if FSD requires constant hands on steering wheel and concentration what is the point? May as well drive yourself.
Dylan16807 · 1h ago
You're right but also keep in mind that FSD is level 2.
irjustin · 3h ago
> levels 3 and 4 are supposed to have the same behavior.
And the part of my sentence that you cut off was all about the circumstances of intervention.
Level 2 requires the driver to choose whether to intervene at all times. This is an unreasonable task for humans.
Level 3 puts the car in charge of when intervention is needed, and even once it wants intervention it still has to maintain safe control for several seconds as part of the system spec.
Level 4 puts the car in charge of when intervention is wanted, but you can refuse to intervene and it has to be able to park itself.
So I will double down on my claim. Until the car requests intervention AND the timer runs out, level 3 and 4 are the same. They require the same abilities out of the car. And that section of time, between wanting intervention and getting intervention, is the hardest part of level 3 driving by far. If you can solve that, you're 90% of the way to level 4.
A level 3 car has to be able to handle emergencies several seconds long, and turning it into level 4 is mostly adding the ability to park on the shoulder after you get out of the initial emergency.
The gap between 4 and 5 is a bunch bigger. A level 4 car can refuse to drive based on weather, or location, or type of road, or presence of construction, or basically anything it finds mildly confusing. 5 can't.
I edited a bit for clarity, but also I'll append a thought experiment as an extra edit:
A level 3 car with an hours-long driver intervention timer is basically identical to a level 4 car.
If you have a 0 second intervention timer, you're barely better than a level 2 car.
How long does the timer have to be before developing your level 3 system is almost as difficult as a level 4 system?
I don't think it's very long.
irjustin · 1h ago
I agree with your thought experiments and also agree that overall it's a valid, technically accurate interpretation. So, this may be where we agree to disagree.
I still stand by level 3 != level 4 in terms of real world liability.
Level 3 allows too much wiggle room and sloppiness to be able to legally shift liability away from the driver. At that point you're playing that "intervention period" length. Manufacturers claiming Level 3 will want to lower it as much as possible, regulators raise it. To me, Level 3 simply shouldn't exist.
Only at Level 4 is the expectation, without a doubt, the machine is in control. A person in the driver seat is optional because the steering wheel and pedals are as well. When people bought "Full Self Driving" they seriously believe "when can I go to sleep?" ability is where it belongs, which always put the expectation at Level 4.
Dylan16807 · 1h ago
Saying level 3 shouldn't exist makes sense. But I don't think the liability gets very blurry as long as the intervention period is properly documented.
It looked like the Mercedes system is 10 seconds which seems like plenty to me.
And while it would be nice to sleep I'll be pretty happy just looking away from the road.
cosmicgadget · 5h ago
I believe they call it SFSD (supervised) now.
irjustin · 3h ago
wow yeah i didn't know that... what a mess.
genewitch · 2h ago
"A lie", FSD as it stands right now is a lie. A few cars might be able to drive a few geofenced places, but no car anywhere can drive anywhere, even with perfect weather and visibility and I'd even wager no traffic or even no other cars at all. Our Subaru gives up steering if there's no olcar in front, on "suburban" and rural roads about 35% of the time. More on some roads, less on others. I cannot determine, while driving, the cause for half of the self driving disable occurrences. No fog line and a broken center for an intersection on a 1 lane road it'll shut off nearly every time. It's surprising when it doesn't.
I've clocked nearly a half million miles on the road (I'll be there sometime in the next 9 months), and the range of technical ability you need to drive in just the US, no, scratch that, any given state or even county varies so much and potentially so often that FSD is just a lie to sell cars. I'm willing to upload a full hour drive touring a few parishes around here in my quite heavy Lexus, front and rear cameras, just to prove my point. I'd do it in the subaru but the dashcam isn't very good and also it's lineage is rally so it exaggerates how poor the roads are. My YouTube has dashcam footage of drives that I'm willing to bet no automated system could handle, even if it claimed to be "level 5". Driving after a storm or hurricane is another issue. I know the hazards in general and specifically for the areas I'd need to travel during or after an emergency. I cannot fathom the amount of storage and processing that would take, to have that for every location with roads. On board, in the car? Maybe in 20 years.
Dylan16807 · 48m ago
> I cannot fathom the amount of storage and processing that would take, to have that for every location with roads. On board, in the car? Maybe in 20 years.
Doing some napkin math, with 4 million miles of road in the US, if you wanted to store 1KB of data per meter of road, hundreds of data points, you'd only need 7TB for the entire database.
And the processing to make it shouldn't be anything special, should it? Collection would be hard.
delichon · 9h ago
Removing the steering wheel and pedals from the robotaxi is Tesla embracing culpability, whether they like it or not. If they are negligent and cannot claim human error they will face huge damage awards.
zombiwoof · 4h ago
It seems clear to me at least that Elon did a major pump of FSD, realized he was full of shit so got into politics to try to hack the system in his favor to hide the truth
bumby · 8h ago
This is the same attitude that people used to try and avoid any culpability for Boeing in the 737-Max crashes. Even if they was a technical way to avoid a crash, it doesn’t avoid negligent or blatantly bad engineering practices. There’s a reason why engineers are expected to have an ethical duty to the public. Automakers get an industrial exemption on the assumption that the internal processes are sufficient to address the risk…What are we supposed to do when they aren’t?
naikrovek · 8h ago
Watch out for Tesla automobiles automatically turning off FSD just before impact so they can say that FSD was not in use at the time of impact.
I’ve heard rumors of that happening.
LeoPanthera · 5h ago
I hate Tesla as much as the next sane man, but this rumor is just a rumor. Tesla counts FSD (and Autopilot) as being "in use" during an accident if it was enabled at any time in the 10 seconds before the accident.
mindslight · 7h ago
Isn't that the whole point of levels 2 and 3? Fine print applied to the marketed operating modes of heavy equipment. Surprise, you were supposed to be driving!
Dylan16807 · 5h ago
"Surprise, you were supposed to be driving" is a level 2 problem. Level 2 requires inhuman levels of constant vigilance. Level 3 requires you to be awake and able to drive, and you will get several seconds of warning to switch from watching TV to looking at the road.
michaelmrose · 5h ago
People on average can't effectively pretend to drive and switch to actually driving very effectively
cowlby · 9h ago
As an anecdotal data point, I picked up a '24 Model 3 precisely for the self-driving capabilities. The difference between a Tesla running hardware/software HW3/v11 vs HW4/v12 was night and day.
Literally felt like the difference between flying a helicopter (actively trying to kill u lol) and an airplane.
I honestly did not get the hype until this specific HW4/v12 combination which didn't exist until last summer or so. It's the first time FSD felt like a safety feature for just $99 a month.
beAbU · 2h ago
> safety feature for just $99 a month
Are you hearing yourself.
How can a "safety feature" be a subscription?
Next they'll charge you a microtransaction every time you fasten your seatbelt?
CommenterPerson · 9h ago
$99 per month?! For some half baked software? I need a car, not a parasite.
fastball · 5h ago
At this point, Tesla's FSD is almost certainly more "baked" than the vast majority of software you've ever used. The amount of engineering and compute time that have gone into it are colossal.
That said, something being excessively baked does not mean it is good.
jajko · 4h ago
Thats an irrelevant argument (and unless you work there directly on this just empty baseless words).
The point is - it didnt deliver, and still doesnt. Its a securities fraud out in the open, but clearly from a guy who is above the threshold of applicable law
fastball · 2h ago
It's not an argument, it is a statement of fact. FSD is not half-baked, it is very thoroughly baked. By any software metric you choose, it is thoroughly baked.
- It has been developed over many years.
- Many, many, many engineering hours have been spent on it.
- Many compute cycles have been spent developing it.
- It is very thoroughly tested.
- It has been designed by brilliant engineers whose only goal is that it works for its intended purpose.
- It has had hardware developed for it at multiple levels of the stack (training, inference).
All that said: autonomous driving remains a very hard-to-solve problem, so it is not finished software, and very well may never be.
But it is not half-baked.
watwut · 1h ago
> It has been designed by brilliant engineers whose only goal is that it works for its intended purpose.
Is this statement actually true? From what I heard, it was designed by highly overworked stressed engineers working in pretty bad workplace conditions. They work there, because there are not many other places to work at and doing similar work.
And their primary goal was to produce as fast as possible.
> It is very thoroughly tested.
Is it?
wat10000 · 8h ago
You can buy it outright if you prefer. Or you can just not buy it at all.
ghushn3 · 6h ago
The latter option being the one that is the best possible one.
tw04 · 9h ago
>I honestly did not get the hype until this specific HW4/v12 combination which didn't exist until last summer or so. It's the first time FSD felt like a safety feature for just $99 a month.
That's exactly the problem. It's great right until it isn't, at which point it's likely to make a decision that will kill you or someone else if you aren't lucky.
(most) Humans are REALLY good at paying attention to something that will actively kill them at any moment - you don't see a lot of people running a chainsaw while sending a text to their friend about drinks later in the day.
Humans are REALLY bad at stopping something they trust (IMO foolishly), with less than a half a second of notice, from killing them or someone else. It is completely natural to get lulled into a sense of security when something mostly works exactly as you'd expect.
Meanwhile Tesla wants to act as if it's the driver's fault anytime there's a crash without acknowledging they are actively perpetuating the myth of: "this thing drives itself". It's literally called "Full Self Driving" and Telsa expects the average person to look at that name and think: you need to be vigilant anytime you turn this on because it is a beta feature that may drive into oncoming traffic at any moment.
Gareth321 · 2h ago
> That's exactly the problem. It's great right until it isn't, at which point it's likely to make a decision that will kill you or someone else if you aren't lucky.
This should be weighed against the fallibility of human drivers, surely? Our point of comparison is not "perfect", it's "human." Inasmuch, with millions of miles driven, FSD appears to be many times safer than humans: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Tesla-Autopilot-and-FSD-are-no...
Not perfect, and there will be crashes, but much better, and I think that's the yard stick we should be using, because no system will ever be perfect.
watwut · 1h ago
Tesla comes across safer when you compare the performance under completely different conditions and then shift blame on humans for not reacting in a second when Tesla suddenly disengage.
Gareth321 · 56m ago
Tesla records all FSD accidents when it has been engaged 10 seconds prior to the crash. I don't think your claim is accurate but if you have a source I would be glad to read it.
cowlby · 9h ago
Agreed, but you can't not pay attention with the new Vision Attention Monitoring. Not sure if it's HW4/v12 specific but it watches your eyesight specifically.
So for example, if I look at the screen, my phone, or start day-dreaming for even a few seconds, it'll beep and quickly strike me out from using FSD. "FSD (supervised)" is how it shows up in the UI too at least giving some expectation of it not being autonomous.
So in practice, I'm picturing the right driving inputs and watching what it's doing.
elgenie · 3h ago
When the words are actually spelled out the sheer ridiculousness of "Full Self Driving" having a "(Supervised)" postscript becomes rather readily apparent.
Tesla can't help but know that the supposed non-driver getting constantly nagged to be vigilant as if actively driving destroys most of the value proposition of FSD. Vision Attention Monitoring has quite a bit of potential to be very useful … precisely in situations in which vehicles are not driving themselves.
thejazzman · 8h ago
Put on a hat or sunglasses and it falls back to periodic steering wheel nags
I haven't tested it but I assume the same is true if you put tape over the camera
zaptrem · 3h ago
Taping over the camera causes it to lock out (it can tell the difference between that and night time).
JumpCrisscross · 4h ago
> you can't not pay attention with the new Vision Attention Monitoring
Polarised sunglasses. Works on my Subaru. Works on my buddy’s Tesla.
mhss · 8h ago
Quite frankly sounds super boring. I prefer driving than supervising. Only true unsupervised autonomous driving would be interesting for me (e.g Waymo).
SoftTalker · 7h ago
But doesn’t Waymo autonomous driving only work in certain areas with hyper accurate maps?
tw04 · 7h ago
Correct, because that combined with about $30k in sensors is the only true safe way to do it today.
fastball · 5h ago
> the only true safe way
An unsubstantiated claim given that there are many, many safe human drivers who have neither LIDAR sensors nor hyper-accurate pre-mapping at their disposal.
Dylan16807 · 5h ago
Quote the rest of the line please.
fastball · 4h ago
"today"? Are there not humans on the road today? There have been a number of safety issues with Waymos, certainly too many to describe them as the one true safe option, today.
Entertaining a No True Scotsmen is a bit of a silly exercise anyway, but this semantic game is extra silly.
Dylan16807 · 3h ago
The person you replied to was talking about how we can achieve safe autonomous driving today. When I remind you of that context, that your rebuttal is not actually rebutting what they said, I am not performing No True Scotsman.
The gap between humans and computers is enormous, not some weird gotcha tactic.
fastball · 2h ago
I literally rebutted that context. Waymos are not safe autonomous driving today, they have caused various safety issues in the era of "today". I didn't include "today" in my original comment because none of the available options are "the only true safe way to do it today", but I don't think it is constructive to just say that.
No True Scotsman was obviously in reference to GC, not you.
Dylan16807 · 2h ago
"Waymos are not safe" could be a rebuttal to what they said. "There are many safe humans" is not a rebuttal to what they said. Your comment above was the latter.
> No True Scotsman was obviously in reference to GC, not you.
I'm unsure what they said that would qualify. Was it adding "true unsupervised"? I think that's a fair qualification, because most of the point of self driving is lost if I can't look away from the road.
alwa · 4h ago
I took "it" to imply "autonomous driving." But I very much agree this is extra silly.
LightBug1 · 10m ago
No chance in hell I'd go near that ... good luck.
dhx · 7h ago
For reference, [1] is the recent UN regulation for road vehicles to have an event data recording (EDR) function which records certain telemetry about a vehicle for -5 to +5 seconds around a crash event. None of these fields relate to ADS/ADAS. This difference is described at [3] but in summary, EDR telemetry describes what the vehicle physically does, not who or how the vehicle was instructed to operate in that way. EDR telemetry doesn't answer if ADS/ADAS applied the throttle input or whether it was the human operator depressing the accelerator pedal.
Countries take time to decide how to implement the UN regulations so in countries such as Australia, there is (from a quick check) still no regulation requiring light passenger road vehicles to record any telemetry. The US already had a form of regulation requiring limited telemetry about a vehicle for -20 to +5 seconds around a crash event to be recorded.[2] This US regulation also did not require recording of fields relevant to ADS/ADAS.[2]
What this article describes is access to telemetry data that manufacturers such as Tesla are voluntarily recording within vehicles that may include some idea of ADS/ADAS operation during a crash event. For example, Tesla may be recording the human throttle input separate from recording of the ADS/ADAS throttle input, showing whether it was the driver or vehicle who caused the car to accelerate dangerously before a crash. But the UN regulation and older US regulation didn't expect Tesla to record more than just a single throttle position field, ignoring whether ADS/ADAS or the driver directed the throttle position.
While I admit I shouldn't be defending Tesla for free - I've come to realize a lot of these "FSD crashed into me and Elon is hiding it!" claims usually come down to the user driving recklessly then using FSD as a get out of jail free card.
FSDs failures are either far more boring (imagining a stop sign) or put's the user in danger (driving onto train tracks).
duxup · 10h ago
The article is about Tesla not wanting the data out for everyone to see.
If that’s the case they should show it.
potato3732842 · 9h ago
Unless the data literally sings it from the tree tops less than honest people will pretend it says whatever they want it to say for clicks and eyeballs.
With how popular Musk is these days I can 100% where Tesla is coming from here.
FireBeyond · 8h ago
> less than honest people will pretend it says
Like Tesla?
If your airbags don't deploy, Tesla doesn't consider it an accident for the purposes of reporting (modern safety systems don't blindly deploy airbags, they evaluate g-forces, speeds, angles of impact, etc., so you can hit something at 25mph and the vehicle decides your seatbelts are sufficient. Tesla decides "that's not a reportable collision"). Know when else your airbags might not deploy? Very serious accidents, when hardware or controllers are damaged.
Speaking of which, fatalities are not included in that report. "It was a collision where someone died, but doesn't merit inclusion in a safety report" is a weird position to take.
watwut · 1h ago
Isn't Musk one of the least honest persons on the planet? His capacity for lying is known for years and literal grounds for his success.
bhhaskin · 10h ago
Then the data would support that no?
jfoster · 10h ago
It is possible that Tesla wouldn't want positive data released. If their approach is trending positively, releasing the data would suggest to competitors that they should adopt the same approach.
globalnode · 10h ago
Too bad? Their devices are interacting with people in a public environment. Tough industry I guess.
jfoster · 8h ago
I agree. I think the public benefit of that data being published is more important their competitive concern.
myvoiceismypass · 10h ago
You are arguing about / defending something completely irrelevant to the topic at hand.
The actual article is about how Tesla claims that providing this data would be a competitive disadvantage that rivals could use.
MBCook · 9h ago
Which is a very odd claim to try to make.
Would we accept Pfizer releasing a new pill without evidence?
“It’s better at preventing heart attacks than anything else. But we can’t show you data, that would hurt our competitive advantage.”
ivewonyoung · 9h ago
Pfizer provides the data to the FDA which decides whether to approve the medication, and releases only a subset of the data to public.
> The records must be reviewed to redact “confidential business and trade secret information of Pfizer or BioNTech and personal privacy information of patients who participated in clinical trials,” wrote DOJ lawyers in a joint status report, filed Monday.
...
> But we can’t show you data
Tesla shows the data to the NHTSA whose experts look at it and can force recalls so your analogy and argument make no sense.
JumpCrisscross · 10h ago
Honestly still waiting for someone—could be Canada, the EU or California—to announce heightened approval standards for (or even a moratorium on) cameras-only self-driving cars on public streets.
yatopifo · 4h ago
I don’t think this is going to happen in Canada. It’s much easier for us to simply put tariffs on Tesla vehicles to further reduce their market share.
moduspol · 10h ago
They kill a lot fewer people than the ones driven solely by humans.
tw04 · 9h ago
Tesla has roughly 0.3% VIO TOTAL in the US (taking global statistics into account it's barely measurable), and a fraction of that fraction are actually using FSD on a regular basis - so I would sure hope they kill "a lot fewer people".
Indeed. My point is: so why focus on regulation that targets <0.1% of traffic fatalities?
Here's an alternative idea that would save a lot more lives:
Take the camera-based driver attention monitoring that works in my seven year-old Tesla, which notices IMMEDIATELY if I look away from the windshield for more than a second or two, and then require that in the human-driven cars.
Estimates for annual deaths in the US from distracted driving are between 3,250 and 12,400. An in-cabin camera is not expensive or specialty hardware. The tech is there, the costs are low. We could save a lot of lives!
If we're ignoring that to focus on Tesla's FSD, the goal is not sensible regulation or saving lives.
otterley · 8h ago
> Take the camera-based driver attention monitoring that works in my seven year-old Tesla, which notices IMMEDIATELY if I look away from the windshield for more than a second or two, and then require that in the human-driven cars.
This exists already in Subaru vehicles, even ones with ICEs. It's called "DriverFocus." It's super helpful. However, I don't believe the technology is mandated in all vehicles yet.
The driver drowsiness alert in Teslas seems to be much more limited than that. It only activates at speeds over 60km/h, when driven for more than 10 minutes, and when Autopilot is not engaged. I wonder why they disable it when Autopilot is on?
moduspol · 6h ago
AutoPilot is already independently monitoring driver attentiveness. With FSD, if your eyes are visible, it's watching your eyes. If it can't see your eyes (or you don't have FSD), it falls back to requiring the driver to apply a small and specific bit of torque to the steering wheel consistently.
The drowsiness alert would be superfluous when it's watching your eyes. It's already going to yell at you if it can't see your open eyes looking out the windshield for more than a second or two.
Whether or not the "steering wheel torque" method is better than a vision-based driver drowsiness alert is probably debatable, but it would be pretty tough to fall asleep while also applying exactly the right amount of torque to keep Autopilot engaged.
RollingRo11 · 9h ago
> Take the camera-based driver attention monitoring that works in my seven year-old Tesla, which notices IMMEDIATELY if I look away from the windshield for more than a second or two, and then require that in the human-driven cars
This. Put it on all vehicles that are driven (exc. waymo, zoox, and the like).
It yells at me sometimes when I'm driving down my drive way and looking at my goats instead of the driveway, which is fair. It also yells at me when I look at the mirrors for 'too long' or if I look for 'too long' for potential cross traffic when crossing an intersection (when driving late at night, I try to look for potential red light runners, but you have to spend more time looking). It also tells my spouse to sit up when she already is. Chances are this alert is going to be disabled, because it's a bigger distraction than anything else.
It also likes to alert about cross traffic when I start moving to sequence after traffic I saw that is in motion. Those alerts would be handy if it were about traffic I didn't see though, so I don't want to turn them off, even though so far they've been unhelpful.
tw04 · 9h ago
>Indeed. My point is: so why focus on regulation that targets <0.1% of traffic fatalities?
A: Citation? Just because it's less than 0.3% of cars on the road doesn't mean it's less than 0.1% of fatalaties. And citation that doesn't let Tesla pass off any FSD crash as "driver error" which they have a horrible habit of doing. If FSD disengages at impact, they call that driver error, which is absolute bullshit.
And because Tesla is taking 0 accountability for it, they are passing it onto the driver. They want to have their cake and eat it too. If you or I are driving distractedly and kill someone, we face serious criminal and financial repercussions.
If FSD decides to swerve out of the lane and into oncoming taffic, Tesla wants to shrug and say "I guess the driver should have been better". That's trash, and should be banned from our roads summarily.
jaggederest · 9h ago
Given the topic at hand, how do you know that? How is it possible to know that?
moduspol · 9h ago
Well, my claim was fairly specific, so it's quite easy.
There are ~42k traffic fatalities in the US each year. Cameras-only self driving cars are a tiny fraction of the number of total cars.
The highest estimates I've seen for annual traffic deaths with an ADAS involved (not even implying causation) is in the range of dozens. Cameras-only self driving cars would be a fraction of those. As a result, there are quite possibly more than a thousand traffic fatalities each year caused by human-driven cars for each ONE caused by a cameras-only self driving car.
But my original claim was only that they kill a lot fewer. That seems self-evident.
jaggederest · 4h ago
That's cute, and also totally irrelevant. Nobody cares about absolute numbers, the thing to care about is the rate. Pick your denominator, but I like deaths per million miles.
Polonium ingestion also kills fewer people than self driving cars, so by that token, polonium ingestion is perfectly safe.
remarkEon · 7h ago
Given that Elon wants to torpedo this spending bill over his precious EV credits, I imagine the honeymoon phase is assuredly over and he won't be successful in influencing the administration here.
fastball · 5h ago
Elon is on the record many times saying there should be 0 tax credits for vehicles.
elgenie · 3h ago
What is this record of which you speak and what, pray tell, are the penalties suffered by Elon for lying repeatedly on it?
fastball · 2h ago
Google is your friend. While there, please try to find the record of Elon saying he wants more subsidies, as presumably you'd also like to see the record of that.
riffraff · 6h ago
Or he just gets his credits back and surprise, there's no longer a problem with pork and deficit.
Trump may not care about reelection but congressmen do.
BrtByte · 3h ago
It's always a red flag when a company starts leaning hard on "competitive harm" to block safety-related data
Public roads, public data. I want to know how at risk I am from all these Teslas around me.
xyst · 5h ago
Tesla executive leadership continues to be a joke in their industry. I hope their sales continue to drop off across the globe.
cosmicgadget · 5h ago
I hope they don't compare market cap.
Yeul · 49m ago
That's what I don't get about Tesla.
VW, BYD or Toyota or judged on how many cars the sell.
What is Tesla judged on?
But then I remember that investors just want to dump their shares on the next sucker they don't really care about the underlying business case.
kergonath · 4h ago
Behold, transparency!
Havoc · 10h ago
I guess they haven’t doge’d enough people to bury this
qingcharles · 9h ago
He's at war with the gov now. He's on a mad tweet frenzy about burning up all the GOP reps that voted for the tax bill. They just doge'd his pick for NASA Administrator on the same day his black eye showed up. Get the popcorn.
davidw · 8h ago
Europe is shooting itself in the foot if they're not doing their damnedest to brain-drain as many scientists and engineers as they can while things implode here.
jajko · 4h ago
Who wants to come will come, no worries. We dont offer highest salaries but highest quality of life and happiness, and currently arguably highest moral ground. Like all folks who want to study on Harvard lol.
No point trying to get folks who will move again soon when something else changes in US.
_DeadFred_ · 8h ago
Funny he is suddenly 'at war' at the exact same time he was scheduled to leave government from the start (temporary employee limit) AND he had to go back to his companies and rehab his reputation. Super convenient timing and totally not theatrics/lies from the reality TV personality and the guy who said he wasn't donating to either presidential candidates this cycle right before buying Trump the election.
morkalork · 8h ago
This is interesting because the only thing keeping senators in line with Trump's bs before was the threat of a primary funded by Musk, how does he whip their votes now without that threat?
dylan604 · 7h ago
The primary challenge is still a threat. Instead of just turning to the Bank of Musk, he'll/they'll(RNC) will do what they have always done by sending out campaign emails to get people to donate.
ryukoposting · 7h ago
Go look at the result of Wisconsin's recent supreme court race, and tell me anyone in the GOP is convinced that Musk bux should actually scare them.
tzs · 6h ago
That wasn’t a primary. Primaries are much more influenceable by money.
FireBeyond · 10h ago
Reuters throwing shade:
> Tesla is widely known for its so-called advanced driver-assistance systems, including Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (FSD).
(emphasis mine)
ancillary · 10h ago
It seems less like shade than precision about who's saying it's advanced.
JumpCrisscross · 10h ago
Tesla has rebranded its self-driving ambitions half a dozen times. (I’m honestly currently blanking on which of Robotaxi and Cybercab is the Level 4 product.) It’s fair to point out that “advanced driver-assistance” is another neologism of Musk’s, and not a term to be treated as comparable with other companies’ capabilities.
MBCook · 9h ago
ADAS is the industry standard term for things above basic cruise control isn’t it?
This mostly just demonstrates that the reporter doesn’t know what they’re talking about. ADAS is a term of art that encompasses everything above dumb cruise control, including things like adaptive cruise control or collision detection.
Alex_001 · 8h ago
It’s honestly hilarious that they think they deserve access to Tesla’s internal data just because users can view the software version on their own car. That’s like saying a public login screen means the whole system should be open-source. Tesla has every right to protect its own data — especially when it’s tied to proprietary tech and competitive edge. If regulators or media want deeper access, it should be done through proper agreements, not by demanding that confidential info be handed over. You can’t just expect to skip the hard work others have done.
NoPicklez · 4h ago
Yes it is a weak argument, but otherwise I disagree.
Data about a hitting a pedestrian or having an accident isn't proprietary tech. They're not asking for source code, but for data that should arguably be made available for people to see in the interest of transparency and this information is sought consistently from other car makers.
Tesla is of course sticking out like a sore thumb, because they have put the most investment into EV's and "autopilot" features the data might show that they stick out.
No comments yet
ryukoposting · 7h ago
NHTSA reports crash data for every auto manufacturer. Tesla's is noteworthy for being heavily redacted.
the_optimist · 6h ago
Quite oddly in the context of all these varied comments, this key claim is demonstrated as false.
__m · 5h ago
I've only seen anecdotes, not clear numbers
MaxPock · 10h ago
Musk would never hide something,would he ?
neuroelectron · 3h ago
What, like his bank account number?
londons_explore · 5h ago
As a shareholder I'm pissed off that my money is going into unimportant legal wrangling rather than developing better products.
Like who cares if software version numbers are released on crash reports or not?
atwrk · 3h ago
May I ask why you are a shareholder? IMO Tesla is headed straight into insolvency with sales collapsing all over the world and factories at <60% capacity, all while the global EV market is surging.
olelele · 2h ago
AFAICT the stock is also insanely overvalued, especially compared to ”real” car making companies eg Toyota. The Silicon Valley hype valuation based on future exponential growth seems further and further away from reality every day. P/E anyone?
The only part I don't know why people would trust is the FSD/Autopilot of which I wouldn't recommend people to buy. But as an EV its an excellent car.
However, if you look at the latest press release by JDPower (https://www.jdpower.com/business/press-releases/2025-us-vehi...) you'll see that Tesla now ranks right near the average. Significantly better than in previous years and ahead of other common car makers.
The dependability study could do with a segment purely on EV's, given that EV's as a whole are improving by roughly 33 PP100 per year.
> you'll see that Tesla now ranks right near the average. Significantly better than in previous years and ahead of other common car makers.
You are citing a study that specifically excludes Tesla. And even then you’re bragging about Tesla being … average?
If they really wanted to exclude them they wouldn’t have included them all.
I cited the study, because it was the same study commented above where the most recent study wasn’t mentioned.
I’m not bragging at all, but they’re just not as bad of a car as some people are giving them a wrap for. Heck they had the same number of problem reported as Ford, does that mean Fords are bad cars? No.
Interestingly, MotorEasy found that gas and hybrids were the most reliable. Diesel were the least reliable.
Some of the comments I hear almost universally from prior Model 3 owners when they switch to an Ioniq 5 is how much nicer the ride quality is and how nice it is to have buttons on the dash again.
There have been comments around the ride harshness of the model 3. In the latest model it has been specifically fixed.
I think any self driving tech at the moment is just terrible and shouldn’t be used, for the record
I think Elon found a glitch it tech-bro reasoning: you promise a product, people believe you and buy it, then they realise that it is not what was advertised, but it is OK, because new version has it now, so you can't complain, it is your fault in the eyes of your peers, you should have made a better research or whatever.
Rinse and repeat. And the most surprising thing is that it is working. People still haven't got what they paid for a decade ago, and this is considered to be OK.
Your FSD has almost got you killed? Don't worry, this is your fault, and anyway the bug was already fixed in the update. Probably. This time for sure.
Combine that with FSD rubbish bait and switch, nutjob CEO, and the cratering of any brand goodwill ... I won't touch those cars if you paid me (seriously).
And honestly, I recognise the innate progression of the technology ... but others have caught and surpassed to the point that I don't have to worry about buying the lesser car anymore when I go elsewhere.
whilst surely top ranked, they apparently share the top with others makers (https://www.euroncap.com/en/ratings-rewards/latest-safety-ra...) (Large Family Cars category, last two years, order by occupant protection).
It’s easy to pick the worst model of the lot and use it to disregard the entire brand, but I can’t expect any more critical thought from some online
Thank you for contributing to lower the overall amount of critical thinking on the internet.
So in a way it’s great that they’ve been convinced to buy zero-emissions vehicles by giving them a reactionary edgelord option that’s just like every other EV. (Except for the suicide FSD mode which is more like a Darwin awards filter.)
Teslas don’t even have a Speedo, let alone a HUD. It’s just an iPad with proprietary software which can’t sync with your phone. Terrible
For me this is a clear win for Tesla. Anything under 5s is crazy fast to me anyway, so the other things I mention are worth a lot more.
Bidirectional charging would be great, everything else is already far up there.
Do you mean I could get something significantly better if I choose not to get the things which are important to me? Because that would be worse for me, not better. I have never cared about the badge.
Out of interest, if I reduced the trunk space a little, which similarly priced EVs could you recommend with more range and better performance than the Model Y AWD Long Range?
Remember what Musk said many years ago, something along the lines of that he wants to get the global EV movement started, and that for this to happen he'd gladly let anyone use his patents without retaliating?
Now he doesn't even want data which might save lives to get out into the public.
> June 12, 2014
> Yesterday, there was a wall of Tesla patents in the lobby of our Palo Alto headquarters. That is no longer the case. They have been removed, in the spirit of the open source movement, for the advancement of electric vehicle technology.
> Tesla Motors was created to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport. If we clear a path to the creation of compelling electric vehicles, but then lay intellectual property landmines behind us to inhibit others, we are acting in a manner contrary to that goal.
https://web.archive.org/web/20160722033909/https://www.tesla...
[1] https://www.nhtsa.gov/laws-regulations/standing-general-orde...
>and the crash involves a vulnerable road user being struck or results in a fatality, an air bag deployment, or any individual being transported to a hospital for medical treatment.
No comments yet
The nice thing is we can look for ourselves to what extent that is true by downloading the CSV: https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/ffdd/sgo-2021-01/SGO-2021-01_In...
For example, in the case of BMW, in every single case the field for ADS/ADAS Version is either blank or redacted.
Tesla also has a problem of their telematics underreporting crashes. One of the reasons for that is they don’t consider it a crash if airbags don’t deploy. This was called out by the NHTSA in a prior investigation: https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/inv/2022/INCR-EA22002-14496.pdf.
Here’s the relevant paragraph from that report:
> Gaps in Tesla's telematic data create uncertainty regarding the actual rate at which vehicles operating with Autopilot engaged are involved in crashes. Tesla is not aware of every crash involving Autopilot even for severe crashes because of gaps in telematic reporting. Tesla receives telematic data from its vehicles, when appropriate cellular connectivity exists and the antenna is not damaged during a crash, that support both crash notification and aggregation of fleet vehicle mileage. Tesla largely receives data for crashes only with pyrotechnic deployment, which are a minority of police reported crashes.
Not true. There are many rows for other manufacturers where fields are redacted or blank.
For example:
- Row 7. BMW. ADAS/ADS Version: blank
- Row 8. BMW. ADAS/ADS Version: redacted
- Row 9. Subaru. ADAS/ADS Version: redacted
etc.
Again, not true.
I just filtered for BMW, and in every single instance, without fail, the ADS/ADAS Version cell is either redacted or blank.
I didn't check other manufacturers.
I don't own nor do I want to own a Tesla, but stuff like this is what gets reported and the corrections or actual facts get buried in the resulting noise. I don't really even care that this is about tesla, even.
If this was some sort of rendering or CSV error on your part, then that could happen at CBS or msnbc just as easily, and tomorrow the headlines scream "Tesla only automaker shirking reporting responsibilities"
that sounds rough; hopefully they're OK! did the car drive into them from the side or from behind?
where did it happen? googling "Tesla ditch self-driving accident" turns up nothing, but I would have thought it would have made the news.
- Mississippi 23.9 (highest)
- Texas 14.7
- CA 11.3
- Rhode Island and DC 4.8 (lowest)
Anecdotally, the huge trucks and driving culture (aggressive, fast) would have made me guess Texas has higher deaths before seeing the data.
Although there's a good argument to be made that Tesla's entire system has fundamental design flaws which they have negligently disregarded.
I also believe that marketing it as FSD should be liable and scrutinized as a level 4 system. Because when you hear FSD, the public naturally thinks the abilities marked in level 4 arguably even 5.
(Though a consequence is that levels 3 and 4 are very close together in difficulty. We might not see many level 3 cars.)
https://www.sae.org/binaries/content/gallery/cm/content/news...
The time is up to the manufacturer, isn't it?
Mercedes uses 10 seconds right now and that seems pretty good to me. At that point I know it can't be too dire or the car would have already emergency stopped.
The time depends on how quickly an event unfolds in traffic. You can't guarantee 10s notice for an event that is imminent in 2s and the system might not be able to handle or can't detect.
The car could become temporarily "blind" for some reason with just 4-5s to brake before a collision. It's enough for a human driver even considering reaction time. But it's impossible to guarantee a minimum time without the ability to predict every issue that will happen on the road.
If it becomes "blind" because of an unexpected total system failure, that's an exception to the guarantee just like your transmission suddenly exploding is an exception. It had better be extremely rare. If it happens regularly then it needs a recall.
When dealing with unpredictable real life events there are no guarantees, unless we're considering the many carveouts to that definition from a legal perspective. A blind car (fluke weather, blown fuse, SW glitch, trolley problem) can no longer guarantee anything. Giving the driver 10s, or assuming the worst and braking hard could equally cause a crash.
> your transmission suddenly exploding is an exception
As long as the brakes or steering work a driver could still avoid a crash. The driver having a stroke is closer to a blind car.
The guarantee here is that the human isn't obligated to intervene for a moment.
If you call that guarantee impossible, then what about level 4 cars? They guarantee that the human isn't obligated to intervene ever. Are level 4 cars impossible?
Is this a wording issue? What would you say level 4 cars promise/provide? Level 3 cars need to promise/provide the same thing for a limited time. And that time has to be long enough to do a proper transfer of attention.
Ah, understood. So the guarantee is that the driver is not legally responsible for anything that happens in those 10s. I always took that as a guarantee of safety rather than from legal consequences.
The guarantee is that you will be very safe and you can go ahead and look away from the road and pay attention to other things. But at most this is as good as a level 4 or 5 car, not an impossibly perfect car.
Which makes me think: if FSD requires constant hands on steering wheel and concentration what is the point? May as well drive yourself.
This isn't correct. Level 4 doesn't require driver intervention[0]. Hence, why I'm arguing "Full Self Driving" starts here, level 4.
So now if you're explicitly not required to "be present" then the system should be liable or at least the "driver" isn't to blame directly.
It's actually level 5 is the same as level 4 but add heavy rain, snow, ice, name-your-adverse-condition.
[0] https://www.sae.org/blog/sae-j3016-update
Level 2 requires the driver to choose whether to intervene at all times. This is an unreasonable task for humans.
Level 3 puts the car in charge of when intervention is needed, and even once it wants intervention it still has to maintain safe control for several seconds as part of the system spec.
Level 4 puts the car in charge of when intervention is wanted, but you can refuse to intervene and it has to be able to park itself.
So I will double down on my claim. Until the car requests intervention AND the timer runs out, level 3 and 4 are the same. They require the same abilities out of the car. And that section of time, between wanting intervention and getting intervention, is the hardest part of level 3 driving by far. If you can solve that, you're 90% of the way to level 4.
A level 3 car has to be able to handle emergencies several seconds long, and turning it into level 4 is mostly adding the ability to park on the shoulder after you get out of the initial emergency.
The gap between 4 and 5 is a bunch bigger. A level 4 car can refuse to drive based on weather, or location, or type of road, or presence of construction, or basically anything it finds mildly confusing. 5 can't.
I edited a bit for clarity, but also I'll append a thought experiment as an extra edit:
A level 3 car with an hours-long driver intervention timer is basically identical to a level 4 car.
If you have a 0 second intervention timer, you're barely better than a level 2 car.
How long does the timer have to be before developing your level 3 system is almost as difficult as a level 4 system?
I don't think it's very long.
I still stand by level 3 != level 4 in terms of real world liability.
Level 3 allows too much wiggle room and sloppiness to be able to legally shift liability away from the driver. At that point you're playing that "intervention period" length. Manufacturers claiming Level 3 will want to lower it as much as possible, regulators raise it. To me, Level 3 simply shouldn't exist.
Only at Level 4 is the expectation, without a doubt, the machine is in control. A person in the driver seat is optional because the steering wheel and pedals are as well. When people bought "Full Self Driving" they seriously believe "when can I go to sleep?" ability is where it belongs, which always put the expectation at Level 4.
It looked like the Mercedes system is 10 seconds which seems like plenty to me.
And while it would be nice to sleep I'll be pretty happy just looking away from the road.
I've clocked nearly a half million miles on the road (I'll be there sometime in the next 9 months), and the range of technical ability you need to drive in just the US, no, scratch that, any given state or even county varies so much and potentially so often that FSD is just a lie to sell cars. I'm willing to upload a full hour drive touring a few parishes around here in my quite heavy Lexus, front and rear cameras, just to prove my point. I'd do it in the subaru but the dashcam isn't very good and also it's lineage is rally so it exaggerates how poor the roads are. My YouTube has dashcam footage of drives that I'm willing to bet no automated system could handle, even if it claimed to be "level 5". Driving after a storm or hurricane is another issue. I know the hazards in general and specifically for the areas I'd need to travel during or after an emergency. I cannot fathom the amount of storage and processing that would take, to have that for every location with roads. On board, in the car? Maybe in 20 years.
Doing some napkin math, with 4 million miles of road in the US, if you wanted to store 1KB of data per meter of road, hundreds of data points, you'd only need 7TB for the entire database.
And the processing to make it shouldn't be anything special, should it? Collection would be hard.
I’ve heard rumors of that happening.
Literally felt like the difference between flying a helicopter (actively trying to kill u lol) and an airplane.
I honestly did not get the hype until this specific HW4/v12 combination which didn't exist until last summer or so. It's the first time FSD felt like a safety feature for just $99 a month.
Are you hearing yourself.
How can a "safety feature" be a subscription? Next they'll charge you a microtransaction every time you fasten your seatbelt?
That said, something being excessively baked does not mean it is good.
The point is - it didnt deliver, and still doesnt. Its a securities fraud out in the open, but clearly from a guy who is above the threshold of applicable law
- It has been developed over many years.
- Many, many, many engineering hours have been spent on it.
- Many compute cycles have been spent developing it.
- It is very thoroughly tested.
- It has been designed by brilliant engineers whose only goal is that it works for its intended purpose.
- It has had hardware developed for it at multiple levels of the stack (training, inference).
All that said: autonomous driving remains a very hard-to-solve problem, so it is not finished software, and very well may never be.
But it is not half-baked.
Is this statement actually true? From what I heard, it was designed by highly overworked stressed engineers working in pretty bad workplace conditions. They work there, because there are not many other places to work at and doing similar work.
And their primary goal was to produce as fast as possible.
> It is very thoroughly tested.
Is it?
That's exactly the problem. It's great right until it isn't, at which point it's likely to make a decision that will kill you or someone else if you aren't lucky.
(most) Humans are REALLY good at paying attention to something that will actively kill them at any moment - you don't see a lot of people running a chainsaw while sending a text to their friend about drinks later in the day.
Humans are REALLY bad at stopping something they trust (IMO foolishly), with less than a half a second of notice, from killing them or someone else. It is completely natural to get lulled into a sense of security when something mostly works exactly as you'd expect.
Meanwhile Tesla wants to act as if it's the driver's fault anytime there's a crash without acknowledging they are actively perpetuating the myth of: "this thing drives itself". It's literally called "Full Self Driving" and Telsa expects the average person to look at that name and think: you need to be vigilant anytime you turn this on because it is a beta feature that may drive into oncoming traffic at any moment.
This should be weighed against the fallibility of human drivers, surely? Our point of comparison is not "perfect", it's "human." Inasmuch, with millions of miles driven, FSD appears to be many times safer than humans: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Tesla-Autopilot-and-FSD-are-no...
Not perfect, and there will be crashes, but much better, and I think that's the yard stick we should be using, because no system will ever be perfect.
So for example, if I look at the screen, my phone, or start day-dreaming for even a few seconds, it'll beep and quickly strike me out from using FSD. "FSD (supervised)" is how it shows up in the UI too at least giving some expectation of it not being autonomous.
So in practice, I'm picturing the right driving inputs and watching what it's doing.
Tesla can't help but know that the supposed non-driver getting constantly nagged to be vigilant as if actively driving destroys most of the value proposition of FSD. Vision Attention Monitoring has quite a bit of potential to be very useful … precisely in situations in which vehicles are not driving themselves.
I haven't tested it but I assume the same is true if you put tape over the camera
Polarised sunglasses. Works on my Subaru. Works on my buddy’s Tesla.
An unsubstantiated claim given that there are many, many safe human drivers who have neither LIDAR sensors nor hyper-accurate pre-mapping at their disposal.
Entertaining a No True Scotsmen is a bit of a silly exercise anyway, but this semantic game is extra silly.
The gap between humans and computers is enormous, not some weird gotcha tactic.
No True Scotsman was obviously in reference to GC, not you.
> No True Scotsman was obviously in reference to GC, not you.
I'm unsure what they said that would qualify. Was it adding "true unsupervised"? I think that's a fair qualification, because most of the point of self driving is lost if I can't look away from the road.
Countries take time to decide how to implement the UN regulations so in countries such as Australia, there is (from a quick check) still no regulation requiring light passenger road vehicles to record any telemetry. The US already had a form of regulation requiring limited telemetry about a vehicle for -20 to +5 seconds around a crash event to be recorded.[2] This US regulation also did not require recording of fields relevant to ADS/ADAS.[2]
What this article describes is access to telemetry data that manufacturers such as Tesla are voluntarily recording within vehicles that may include some idea of ADS/ADAS operation during a crash event. For example, Tesla may be recording the human throttle input separate from recording of the ADS/ADAS throttle input, showing whether it was the driver or vehicle who caused the car to accelerate dangerously before a crash. But the UN regulation and older US regulation didn't expect Tesla to record more than just a single throttle position field, ignoring whether ADS/ADAS or the driver directed the throttle position.
[1] UN Regulation No. 160 - Event Data Recorder (EDR) - https://unece.org/sites/default/files/2023-10/R160E.pdf
[2] CFR Title 49 Subtitle B Chapter V Part 563 - https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-49/subtitle-B/chapter-V/p...
[3] https://unece.org/fileadmin/DAM/trans/doc/2019/wp29grva/GRVA...
https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Pages/HWY18FH011.aspx
https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Pages/HWY18FH004.aspx
https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Pages/HWY16FH018.aspx
Battery fire
https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Pages/HWY21FH011.aspx
FSDs failures are either far more boring (imagining a stop sign) or put's the user in danger (driving onto train tracks).
If that’s the case they should show it.
With how popular Musk is these days I can 100% where Tesla is coming from here.
Like Tesla?
If your airbags don't deploy, Tesla doesn't consider it an accident for the purposes of reporting (modern safety systems don't blindly deploy airbags, they evaluate g-forces, speeds, angles of impact, etc., so you can hit something at 25mph and the vehicle decides your seatbelts are sufficient. Tesla decides "that's not a reportable collision"). Know when else your airbags might not deploy? Very serious accidents, when hardware or controllers are damaged.
Speaking of which, fatalities are not included in that report. "It was a collision where someone died, but doesn't merit inclusion in a safety report" is a weird position to take.
The actual article is about how Tesla claims that providing this data would be a competitive disadvantage that rivals could use.
Would we accept Pfizer releasing a new pill without evidence?
“It’s better at preventing heart attacks than anything else. But we can’t show you data, that would hurt our competitive advantage.”
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/wait-what-fda-wants...
> The records must be reviewed to redact “confidential business and trade secret information of Pfizer or BioNTech and personal privacy information of patients who participated in clinical trials,” wrote DOJ lawyers in a joint status report, filed Monday.
...
> But we can’t show you data
Tesla shows the data to the NHTSA whose experts look at it and can force recalls so your analogy and argument make no sense.
https://wolfstreet.com/2021/12/13/vehicles-in-operation-and-...
Here's an alternative idea that would save a lot more lives:
Take the camera-based driver attention monitoring that works in my seven year-old Tesla, which notices IMMEDIATELY if I look away from the windshield for more than a second or two, and then require that in the human-driven cars.
Estimates for annual deaths in the US from distracted driving are between 3,250 and 12,400. An in-cabin camera is not expensive or specialty hardware. The tech is there, the costs are low. We could save a lot of lives!
If we're ignoring that to focus on Tesla's FSD, the goal is not sensible regulation or saving lives.
This exists already in Subaru vehicles, even ones with ICEs. It's called "DriverFocus." It's super helpful. However, I don't believe the technology is mandated in all vehicles yet.
The driver drowsiness alert in Teslas seems to be much more limited than that. It only activates at speeds over 60km/h, when driven for more than 10 minutes, and when Autopilot is not engaged. I wonder why they disable it when Autopilot is on?
The drowsiness alert would be superfluous when it's watching your eyes. It's already going to yell at you if it can't see your open eyes looking out the windshield for more than a second or two.
Whether or not the "steering wheel torque" method is better than a vision-based driver drowsiness alert is probably debatable, but it would be pretty tough to fall asleep while also applying exactly the right amount of torque to keep Autopilot engaged.
This. Put it on all vehicles that are driven (exc. waymo, zoox, and the like).
It looks like something similar is already happening in the EU (with momentum in the US too.) (See https://spyro-soft.com/blog/automotive/driver-monitoring-sys...)
It yells at me sometimes when I'm driving down my drive way and looking at my goats instead of the driveway, which is fair. It also yells at me when I look at the mirrors for 'too long' or if I look for 'too long' for potential cross traffic when crossing an intersection (when driving late at night, I try to look for potential red light runners, but you have to spend more time looking). It also tells my spouse to sit up when she already is. Chances are this alert is going to be disabled, because it's a bigger distraction than anything else.
It also likes to alert about cross traffic when I start moving to sequence after traffic I saw that is in motion. Those alerts would be handy if it were about traffic I didn't see though, so I don't want to turn them off, even though so far they've been unhelpful.
A: Citation? Just because it's less than 0.3% of cars on the road doesn't mean it's less than 0.1% of fatalaties. And citation that doesn't let Tesla pass off any FSD crash as "driver error" which they have a horrible habit of doing. If FSD disengages at impact, they call that driver error, which is absolute bullshit.
And because Tesla is taking 0 accountability for it, they are passing it onto the driver. They want to have their cake and eat it too. If you or I are driving distractedly and kill someone, we face serious criminal and financial repercussions.
If FSD decides to swerve out of the lane and into oncoming taffic, Tesla wants to shrug and say "I guess the driver should have been better". That's trash, and should be banned from our roads summarily.
There are ~42k traffic fatalities in the US each year. Cameras-only self driving cars are a tiny fraction of the number of total cars.
The highest estimates I've seen for annual traffic deaths with an ADAS involved (not even implying causation) is in the range of dozens. Cameras-only self driving cars would be a fraction of those. As a result, there are quite possibly more than a thousand traffic fatalities each year caused by human-driven cars for each ONE caused by a cameras-only self driving car.
But my original claim was only that they kill a lot fewer. That seems self-evident.
Polonium ingestion also kills fewer people than self driving cars, so by that token, polonium ingestion is perfectly safe.
Trump may not care about reelection but congressmen do.
VW, BYD or Toyota or judged on how many cars the sell. What is Tesla judged on?
But then I remember that investors just want to dump their shares on the next sucker they don't really care about the underlying business case.
No point trying to get folks who will move again soon when something else changes in US.
> Tesla is widely known for its so-called advanced driver-assistance systems, including Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (FSD).
(emphasis mine)
It’s not a term Musk dreamed up.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_driver-assistance_s...
Data about a hitting a pedestrian or having an accident isn't proprietary tech. They're not asking for source code, but for data that should arguably be made available for people to see in the interest of transparency and this information is sought consistently from other car makers.
Tesla is of course sticking out like a sore thumb, because they have put the most investment into EV's and "autopilot" features the data might show that they stick out.
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Like who cares if software version numbers are released on crash reports or not?