Featured Fall of Tesla

It's more of a tablet with a car feature honestly. What did the ceo of Toyota say about Tesla? I forgot.

SM-N986U1 ?

 

From Tesla Loses Top Safety Rankings From IIHS, Consumer Reports:

IIHS on Thursday confirmed that it pulled the Top Safety Pick Plus designation, but said it remains for vehicles built with radar. The institute said it plans to test Tesla’s new system.

Tesla says on its website that it’s making a transition to a new system called “Tesla Vision” that uses cameras, on Model 3s and Ys to be delivered starting in May. The new system will use cameras and Tesla’s neural network computer processing for safety systems, as well as Tesla’s “Autopilot” and “Full Self-Driving” partially automated driver-assist systems. Tesla also has short-range sonar sensors.

CEO Elon Musk has said that the eight-camera vision system works better than the best human drivers, and is a step toward the company’s self-driving ambitions.​

This suggests the 'safety' organizations need to retest the new system, "Tesla Vision." Given this change has not been retroactively applied, they will need a new Tesla to test. With over the air updates, they need to document the version they test, a major omission in their reporting. Regardless, my 2019 Std Rng Plus Model 3 continues to work like it did before.

One other quote, "National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is no longer giving ... lane departure warning" which is a remarkable feat for radar. Lane following and departure have always been video based. Regardless, of the opinions in this and other articles, testing is the gold standard.

Test the cars and rate them for their measured performance. If others are seeking an excuse to not buy a Tesla, this is as useful as any others. New Tesla owners have and confirmed:
Transitioning to Tesla Vision | Tesla

Bob Wilson

ps. Until radar is turned off in my current version, my 2019 Model 3 may have more value.

 

Tesla vehicles made after April (27th I believe) have indeed lost the top safety awards.
This is because Tesla moved to an all camera system and eliminated radar.
Until various organizations get one of the Teslas with the new safety Tesla Vision system, the safety rankings are removed.

 

Any business transitioning from a very successful new specific product to something more general will have growing pains.

 

Boring co in trouble too

 

The camera on my Prime fails as soon as it starts snowing. The radar also does eventually, but it takes a lot more snow to wreck the radar. How does Tesla deal with snow and ice covering the cameras?

 

According to the owner's manuals of many cars, you shouldn't be using those driver aids in inclement weather.

 

It warns that these and many other factors may cause AP to "be unable to function as intended."

 

Not true. For example, dynamic cruise works pretty well, BSM does as well, and you don't have to use the automatic safety systems, they just operate passively. And the radar ones fail later in snow than the optical ones.

 

The 2017 Prime Owner's Manual has 5 pages of warnings for "Conditions under which the system may operate even if there is no possibility of a collision" and "Situations in which the system may not operate properly":


...


And that doesn't count numerous pages of other system warnings.

 

Yeah, I know. What I'm saying is those system work until far heavier snow conditions than the systems that rely on the camera. The camera systems work far worse in difficult conditions than do the systems that rely on the radar sensors.

 

When the context is trying to improve upon humans who kill one another at a rate of about 1** death per 100 million vehicle miles traveled, I suspect that your definition of "works" is very much looser than what a safety engineer means.

** preliminary rates:
2019: 1.11 per 100M-VMT
2020: 1.37 per 100M-VMT. Despite the pandemic-driven reduction in miles driven, total deaths jumped.

 

Try to stay on topic. Since you forgot, it's whether a camera only system is a good idea when they might be expected to fail to operate in snowy or icy weather while a radar sensor equipped system seems to hang in longer in the same conditions. Maybe the answer really is that they don't care and maybe that's because their head spends most of his time in southern California or Texas.

 

Working better in inclement weather may lead to drivers going faster than they can see ahead. Which is why manuals say not to use them then.

 

This is on topic, just not the particular slice of the topic that you want to restrict the discussion to.

Don't make the mistake of portraying one system hanging in longer, as being good enough to step up to a higher SAE Level of autonomous driving, such that the driver can start putting their attention elsewhere besides the road. Unfortunately, too many drivers are already doing this.

 

Absolutely agree and tesla even tells me when it thinks the weather is too harsh for autopilot.

Tesla probably found it was too reliant on the radar and needed to make it slow down when vision systems are not working properly. I do think radar plus vision plus sonar can be safer, its all about the software as there is other information.

IMHO this is an attempt to lower the hardware cost for lower cost models. They still have radar in the X and S. The situation where I last had an accident that hurt my car was when the car in front of the truck in front of me slammed on their brakes on the highway. I didn't have time to react. The radar in my tesla would have detected that hidden car braking and avoided the accident.

 

My neighborhood was top-coating its roads and I spent maybe 8 hours directing traffic on a winding 25 MPH in normal conditions road. I would guess 40% of the drivers were looking at their phones and not at the many signs and cones directing them to unfamiliar lanes. One accident and it was an elderly man who we predicted would drive, his family hid his keys, he found them, after a traffic controller stopped him he he yelled and screamed in frustration at being routed to an unfamiliar lane and 100 yards on ran off the road. Dementia.

NC was just exposed by the capital newspaper as being willing through their local District Attorneys to allow super speeders (40-60 MPH over posted) to plead to a defective equipment charge which is $150 court costs and no points or insurance viewable record. There were some with a dozen such. The explanation was DAs and courts were just too busy. And we wonder why our fatal accident rates and thus insurance rates are so high!

All the automation can't replace experience, enforcement and common sense.

 

I believe your owners manual DOES say that unless you are arguing with Toyota.


From Page 393 of your manual.
https://www.toyota.com/t3Portal/document/om-s/OM47A88U/pdf/OM47A88U

Since the manual disagrees, can we get an apology for accusing somebody of lying when they told the truth?

 

I'm not talking about autonomous driving, I'm taking about safety systems such as detecting when you are closing on a vehicle, blind spot monitoring and so on. In my experience on my car, the radar systems work in conditions where the cameras don't.