Self-Driving Cars

There are going to be crashes (and accompanying lawsuits) before this technology reaches maturity. I'm very curious about how they will affect progress. Is Tesla taking unsafe shortcuts in an effort to get products to market or is this an expected and anticipated risk?

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Is it, as the family alleges, a corner-cutting beta test where the car was lacking an obvious safety feature? Did the car have the braking capabilitu and it failed to work? Was it a predictable error, or the inevitable consequence that security can only be improved through real data acquisition? And was the outcome the car's fault, the state of the barrier before impact, or to some degree the driver's too?

There's a lot of questions there before we can get much of a conclusion from the accident, and even then there's the question of what rates or failure should we expect or allow with self driving cars, and how much time driving themselves we should allow to compare with human drivers—and if there's a significant accident rate but better than with human drivers, is that good enough as a baseline?

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There's also the question of whether Tesla and other self-driving manufacturers can absorb the inevitable financial risk of insuring against these sorts of losses and claims. It makes sense: if a self-driving car gets in a crash, is it the responsibility of the driver or of the manufacturer? Tesla seems to be anticipating the latter.

After all, if an individual crashes their car, the maximum liability tends to extend to damages, since most private individuals can't absorb a large punitive lawsuit. Sue a corporation, however, and the injury lawyers get dollar signs in their eyes. Insurance companies are going to have to come to terms with this.

Edited by Fighteer on Jun 3rd 2019 at 12:45:14 PM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

By definition, a self-driving car that gets into a crash can't be the fault of the driver, since the driver isn't really a "driver" at all but a passenger. So yeah, there is a lot of stuff that is going to have to be sorted out when it comes to insurance and such.

Regardless of these legal hurdles, I'm excited about the development of self-driving cars. It would be amazing to see a highway full of self-driving cars happen within my lifetime.

They'd have to become a lot more affordable before that happens.

Disgusted, but not surprised

But if the driver owns the car and intentionally puts it in self-driving mode knowing the risks, they are a contributor to the crash if not the proximate cause. Tesla, for example, straight up says that driver supervision is required for cars in Autopilot. If a driver ignores this warning and the car crashes in a way that could have been prevented, who is at fault? Heck, what if someone deliberately engages self-driving in an unsafe situation hoping for a big insurance payout?

For companies that use a human remote pilot to supervise the software, it's another can of worms because that specific human being that was helping drive your car could be liable in addition to the company that hired them. What happens if they get bored, or fall asleep, or are mad at their boss that day?

I'm not saying this is clear-cut; I'm saying the exact opposite.

I foresee a day when self-driving becomes so reliable that insurance rates for such cars go down astronomically, and it becomes less affordable to drive manually due to increased liability. Never mind the robo-taxi concept wherein your car works for a living when it isn't driving you around. If enough people get in on that, rates could become so cheap that most people don't bother owning a private vehicle, while those who do have the cost paid for several times over.

Edited by Fighteer on Jun 3rd 2019 at 4:13:25 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Disgusted, but not surprised

Make an Elon Musk hate thread if you're that determined to tell us all about your feelings.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

This isn't exactly a Tesla topic, but given that all Teslas are inherently capable of self-driving, I suppose it's worth a news drop. Tesla's Q2 2019 deliveries beat expectations, setting new production (87,048) and delivery (95,200) records. CNBC article.

I hope the short sellers cry themselves to sleep on their piles of dirty money.

Edit: I found an old topic about electric vehicles, which I've cross-posted in as it's more suitable to discuss Tesla in general there.

Edited by Fighteer on Jul 3rd 2019 at 12:08:36 PM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

On this Now You Know podcast, an interesting point is discussed: in a few years, Tesla may stop selling its cars to the general public. The reason? The cars will be more valuable as fleet vehicles running in robo-taxi mode.

The logic goes thusly: A vehicle like the FSD Model 3 has a retail price averaging around 50,000 USD, earning a gross profit to Tesla of around 20 percent. It will be driven by an individual consumer for a few hours per day and parked for the remainder.

That same vehicle used as a robo-taxi could earn about 300,000 USD over its useful lifetime, working for most of the day (aside from charging and maintenance). It could serve the transportation needs of dozens of people over the course of that day, without taking up any public parking (other than the space needed for pickup and drop-off, plus idle time).

The people using that service could get rid of their private vehicles, saving themselves a lot of money on an annualized basis, and Tesla could realize a gross margin of 500 to 700 percent on each unit, even considering the overhead for maintenance and insurance. 20 percent vs 500 percent: do the math and Tesla would be stupid to sell their cars.

The same would apply to any manufacturer who manages to create a fully autonomous vehicle; I'm using Tesla here because they are many years closer to achieving this than anyone else. In 20 years we could be looking at a world in which private ownership of cars is a novelty rather than an expectation.

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Crossover with the EV topic: Ford and VW are teaming up to compete with Tesla in both EVs and self-driving. Neither of these companies — in fact, none of the major auto manufacturers — have significant expertise in either market. The most popular mass-market EVs have, at best, half the range of a standard Tesla vehicle and nobody else is even close to FSD: the best they can do right now is "geo-fenced areas with good weather".

Edited by Fighteer on Jul 16th 2019 at 10:09:39 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Wow- so we are looking at nothing less than the potential complete transformation of the private transportation industry. Exciting.

The original introduction of personal automobiles transformed America in so many different ways- economically, culturally, even aesthetically. I wonder how the world may change again if we manage to complete a transition to driverless, shared, electronic vehicles?

Another reason this might happen is because Musk has admitted that Tesla may go broke in less than a year if a drastic change not made. Tesla has always struggled to make steady profit as an actual manufacturer.

Disgusted, but not surprised

Don't believe the FUD. Tesla is entirely solvent. The "broke in a year" idiots on CNBC are projecting the cash burn from zero sales revenue, literally. It's intentionally dishonest rhetoric.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

That is not from CNBC. That is from Musk himself from a couple months back.

There is also a Verge article on this from May.

This shift from automaker to robo taxis may very well be due to Musk thinking Tesla will not survive in its current state. This is likely due to Tesla losing over 700 million dollars after the first quarter of 2019. Their Q2 deliveries were good, but their future as a luxury car producer remains uncertain.

Edited by M84 on Jul 16th 2019 at 6:39:59 PM

Disgusted, but not surprised

Ya got a source?

Edit: Oh, you mean the Q1 financials. That's already in the news. We haven't seen Q2 yet, as I understand, which is when they made their big sales comeback. It's not on their investor site yet, anyway.

Edited by Fighteer on Jul 16th 2019 at 6:43:53 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

https://electrek.co/2019/05/16/tesla-hardcore-cost-cutting-elon-musk/

"We're all paper, we're all scissors, we're all fightin' with our mirrors, scared we'll never find somebody to love."

One has to admit that a shift from luxury car maker to robo cab service is a pretty major one. One that may very well come with its own challenges. Pulling double duty as robo cab maker and robo cab service provider will almost certainly prove complicated.

Disgusted, but not surprised

You aren't saying anything novel, you know.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

It does seem like Musk is acknowledging that Tesla remaining a luxury car maker is no longer the best course of action for it.

Like you said, Tesla would have to be stupid to sell their cars.

Edited by M84 on Jul 16th 2019 at 6:59:08 PM

Disgusted, but not surprised

This is a gross misrepresentation.

1. Musk never intended Tesla to be purely a luxury car maker. The Roadster, Model S, and Model X were necessary steps along the path but were not the end goal.
2. The Model 3 and Model Y are mass-market vehicles, albeit on the upper end of that market.
3. The point of Tesla is not to earn anyone a fortune per se, but to be the vanguard of electrification and self-driving. Not just to prove that it can be done, but that it can be done well and produce cars that are desirable in and of themselves, never mind for their environmental value.
4. Tesla would be profitable were it not sinking vast amounts of money into R&D to achieve its long-term goals.
5. Musk's ultimate goal is to build a network of autonomous vehicles. He's doing exactly what he set out to do.

Edited by Fighteer on Jul 16th 2019 at 7:04:19 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Yeah but he probably envisioned it as a bunch of cars he sold to people. His original vision was tons of people buying electrical self driving cars.

That is a little different from a cab service.

Disgusted, but not surprised

Well, it's just one company. Innovative as they may be, it takes more than that to transform an entire economic sector. That's why the government has to get involved.

Them and other car manufacturers embracing EV and AV.

Edited by M84 on Jul 16th 2019 at 7:54:53 PM

Disgusted, but not surprised

Well, there's a bit of a Catch-22. If you want to make a big influence on the auto sector, such that the other manufacturers are forced to compete with you or risk failure, you need to get pretty big yourself. What happens if nobody steps up to the plate, or does so in such a way that they can't offer a product with the same quality as yours?

You can't just be in it to prove a point. If you prove it well enough, you end up having no choice but to stay in.

Again, this has multiple dimensions. Tesla is working from more than one angle here:

1. Provide attractive, competitively priced EVs across the consumer spectrum.
2. Drive consumer interest in EVs to force other manufacturers to follow suit.
3. Provide sustainable alternative energy, primarily solar, to transform the energy production market.
4. Be an industry leader in fully autonomous driving (AVs).
5. Lead the shift in the global auto industry from private ownership to fleets of robo-taxis.

Note that AV and EV are not automatically and intrinsically tied to one another, although they are maturing in parallel.

Also, Musk's other enterprises, particularly The Boring Company, are trying to improve transportation infrastructure alongside the improvements to vehicles and power supply. The end vision is a world in which fully autonomous vehicles transport people 24/7, both over and under the ground, in a 100% sustainable fashion.

Edited by Fighteer on Jul 16th 2019 at 9:40:12 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

There's also the fact that, according to Musk himself in a tweet, Tesla cars will become a lot more expensive if the robo cab thing works out. It's just simple supply and demand.

It'll be interesting to see how Tesla does against Uber and Lyft in this field. Lyft in particular might prove challenging, given its partnership with Waymo.

Edited by M84 on Jul 16th 2019 at 9:40:02 PM

Disgusted, but not surprised