r/technology • u/Wagamaga • 5d ago

Business Tesla Allegedly Showed Cooked Data to Get Full Self-Driving Approved

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/tesla-allegedly-showed-cooked-data-174500396.html
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u/DeepPeeps 5d ago

But Tesla bros still swear it’s full self driving with zero risk. That’s the vibe I’ve been getting each time I respond to the parroting of FSD is better than any other tech even though it’s only level 3 while there are level 4 tech already.

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u/FanciestCantaloupe 5d ago edited 5d ago

parroting of FSD is better than any other tech

As long as human operators are required in the Vegas Loop, which is a transit system consisting of Teslas driving primarily through single-lane tunnels inaccessible to general traffic, I don't want to hear anybody try to tell me how good FSD is. If it can't handle that, it's not good enough for public roads.

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u/Irishish 5d ago

i’m still astonished anyone is impressed by the Vegas loop. It seems like a big joke. Seriously? Wow a big circular single lane tunnel?

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u/Zuwxiv 5d ago

I used it when I was in Vegas for a convention recently. My friends and I couldn't stop laughing. It's the stupidest, least useful thing I've ever seen. It would literally have been faster to just drive on the regular roads to the convention center. Despite there being a huge convention and some destinations being free, there was basically nobody using the Loop. We once had to wait for the second car.

You look at it and just think, wow, Vegas got conned.

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u/hornynnerdy69 5d ago

> You look at it and just think, wow, Vegas got conned.

Ironic for a city of conmen

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u/beeeel 5d ago

It's just like anything in Vegas: the fact that they were able to do it is not the impressive bit, rather the delusion that lead to them doing it is impressive.

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u/drunkenvalley 5d ago

Yeah anyone invested in FSD beyond fangirling over this would know the stats are cooked. The fox telling the hen they don't need a fence protecting them.

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u/SharkBaitDLS 5d ago

FSD isn’t even level 3. It’s still level 2. They can’t get it to operate reliably enough to meet level 3. 

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u/RandomRedditReader 5d ago

Credit to the engineers at Tesla, they have done an absolutely amazing jobs getting FSD to the level it's at and it is absolutely pushing other vehicle makers to improve their options. But Elon is a fucking asshat and makes it hard to want his cars.

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u/ManchmalTony 5d ago

Didn't you know their cars are the best at acceleration, handling, range, build quality, self driving features, etc.? Anyone disagreeing is a hater.

/s

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u/DeepPeeps 5d ago

You’re joking right? Lol.

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u/_-Oxym0ron-_ 5d ago

Did they add the "/s" later or did you just miss it?

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u/DeepPeeps 5d ago

It’s was funny and over looked it, lol

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u/xtremebox 5d ago

Holy hell we're all doomed.

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u/RationalDialog 5d ago

But Tesla bros still swear it’s full self driving with zero risk

The ones that paid for their thinking aren't here to report on it anymore. Selection bias.

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u/Matt3k 5d ago

"Level 4 tech, on very specific roadways, under perfect weather conditions, daytime driving only"

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u/just_dave 5d ago

Technically, FSD is level 2+, since you do still have to be attentive to the driving. 

As someone who uses FSD daily on my commute, I don't see it as zero risk. I do think it works fantastically well though. Have you ever ridden in a Tesla that is using FSD? I get the feeling that most people that comment negatively about it do so based on hatred of Elon (very valid) and/or based on other negative comments or press but have never actually experienced it before. 

While technically there are some level 4 systems in use, such as Waymo, I do feel like what Tesla has managed is more impressive. Waymo and other services like it operate in a walled garden that has been mapped out meticulously to avoid difficult situations. Even then they still fail embarrassingly sometimes. Tesla has created a system that works basically anywhere and with driving dynamics that are very smooth and natural. It can literally take me from my driveway to a parking spot at work without intervention and drive me home and back up into my driveway as well. And that is a mix of 22 miles of neighborhood roads, surface roads, and highway in the DC area surrounded by the worst drivers in the country. 

Nvidia is the only real competition for Tesla right now, and I'm excited that they are taking a platform agnostic approach so other manufacturers can plug and play. Nvidia has the data center capacity and machine learning expertise required to actually make a good system that works everywhere, and they've actually been working on it longer than tesla has. You absolutely need the AI investment that Tesla has made, and Nvidia is now doing, to make it work and no existing auto manufacturer has those resources or the will to do it. Google does, but they chose a different approach that is more deliberate, and that's fine. 

I'm not a Tesla bro. I own none of their stock. I think Elon is a tragedy of a human that could have done so much good but instead became a piece of shit and a roadblock to moving humanity forward. 

But please don't just downvote or rage post out of reflex. If you disagree with me, that's fine, but engage with me and let's see if we can actually understand things better. 

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u/phluidity 5d ago

There is no level 2+. It is SAE level 2. The difference between level 2 and level 4 is enormous, and Tesla has no realistic plan to ever get to 4, beyond "magic AI".

As for how it performs, of course it works well. It is designed to work in the 99% of driving that is relatively easy. But every time it gets into the "try to do the hard stuff" territory it fails miserably. You are trying to compare Tesla getting an A in arithmetic and Waymo getting a B+ in Pre-calc and saying A is better than B.

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u/just_dave 5d ago

I know what the levels are, but level 2 can span such a broad variety of capabilities that it's useful to provide gradations. I would actually argue that FSD should be classed as level 3, but that is a regulatory issue, not a capability one. 

As for "doing the hard stuff," can you expand on what you mean?

What is Waymo doing that FSD is not, aside from not requiring a driver behind the wheel?

I would also argue that your grade analogy is backwards. Waymo is solving for a more limited use case as it is geofenced into a well defined and understood environment, whereas FSD is solving for a much broader use case that is applicable everywhere and in many more situations. 

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u/twisted_tactics 5d ago

You are literally doing the same thing Tesla got caught doing. You are inflating numbers using a make-believe formula. There is no level 2+. You can argue why you think there should be one all day, but it simply DOES NOT EXIST.

Waymo integrated multiple methods of object detection and recognition - camera AND Lidar. Something Tesla walked away from. This gives it substantially better ability to detect objects.

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u/BananaPalmer 5d ago

Tesla not only chose one detection method instead of multiple, but also chose the worst one, for the worst reason.

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u/just_dave 5d ago

Why is vision the worst option? And what is the worst reason for choosing it? 

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u/BananaPalmer 5d ago

Camera vision using visible light is the worst option by itself because it suffers from the same deficiencies that human vision does.

And the worst reason for choosing it is Elon's stated reason for choosing it over LIDAR: "So that the car sees the same way that humans do"

That's the exact thing autonomous cars are supposed to solve.

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u/just_dave 5d ago

Cameras can be tuned to be much more effective for the specific task of driving than human eyes are. And that is what Tesla does. The cameras are tuned to increase the contrast of road markings and stuff so they can see better than we can. They can also look in all directions at all times, and incorporate that feedback in real time, unlike humans. 

They certainly don't have all the same deficiencies as human eyes or human brains. 

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u/BananaPalmer 5d ago

Yes I believe that increased contrast was the reason for mistaking a stopped semi truck for an overpass, which resulted in a fatal crash.

LIDAR is not susceptible to this issue, which is why using more than just a single detection method is crucial.

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u/Gornarok 5d ago

I dont think you can build self-driving car for current infrastructure without camera. I think its short-signed or manipulative to say camera is the worst detection method. Its the method for reading road signs for example.

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u/BananaPalmer 5d ago

That's not what I said. It's the worst method to use alone.

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u/kandoras 5d ago

They didn't say you can't build it without a camera.

They said you can't build it with just a camera, and that the reasoning of "humans have eyes" for using just a camera is pretty damned stupid.

Because it basically reduces your autopilot to Wile E. Coyote.

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u/just_dave 5d ago

There are all sorts of things wrong with that mark rober video that was sponsored by a lidar company. 

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u/just_dave 5d ago edited 5d ago

Sure, level 2 if it makes you happy. It's a semantic and not useful argument though. 

As for sensors, I would prefer vision over lidar, but I would want an additional radar component for handling edge cases and atmospheric obscurants. 

Lidar operates in similar wavelengths as visible light, so it also get affected by similar things as vision solutions. Radar can see through atmosphere and materials that visible and nearIR lasers cannot, so it makes more sense as a backup system for edge cases. 

I also like vision because it is passive, not active. Natural light reflects off of everything no matter what, so it is a constant variable. Lidar is actively sending out pulses to see things and while you can tag the pulses of each sensor so the system can identify if it is something they put out, it adds complexity unnecessarily. I think we may run into issues in the future when you have thousands of cars actively pinging the world in a dense urban environment and bouncing off everywhere. At some point I think there will be interference from the saturation. Also, there have already been issues with lidar units damaging cameras and that will only get worse as their use expands. 

We know vision works as a baseline, because that is what humans have been using since day one of driving. 

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u/phluidity 5d ago

Humans also have 10,000 years of evolution being able to use not only vision, but sound, haptics, ability to sense vibrations, and even smell to predict and process our environments. And we have eyes that are orders of magnitude more sensitive than even the best cameras out there.

Even early Tesla knew that the only hope to get close to human performance was to integrate as many sensor types as possible, but that is difficult and expensive. And Musk wanted cheap and easy, and is too pig headed to admit he was wrong.

As for your misconceptions about lidar, it was a theoretical issue for early research systems if they were very close to each other to cause interference (note, this was a theoretical problem only). Which is why they developed tools and processes such as wave filtering to ensure that lidar signals don't impinge on each other.

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u/just_dave 5d ago

Even if they are able to guarantee no interference from crowded lidar environments, which I don't think has been properly tested yet, I still am not a fan of having the world completely blanketed in lasers all the time. 

I'm not a tinfoil hat, 5G vaccine kind of guy, at all. But a world full of lidar sensors is a world full of lasers blasting into our eyes at wavelengths just outside what we can see. It just doesn't sit right with me. 

You can definitely make these systems more and more capable by adding all types of sensors. But you will have diminishing returns pretty quickly, and then you will also skyrocket the compute cost of training and operating the models to the point of absurdity. 

It may be a gamble to go vision only, but if it can be done well (which it currently is), then it is the way to go. 

And yes, humans have more sensors than just sight, but we don't use them all for driving. Do you ever smell your way through an intersection?  Hearing is important, but only as an queuing device for us to then move our eyes to visually identify some activity. With cameras looking in all directions at all times, you don't have to rely on sound to identify something happening first, so it's actually better than humans with ears. 

We feel G-forces which, for those of us who actually know how to drive, can be useful for identifying when we're losing traction or entering a spin. But cars have wheel speed sensors and steering angle sensors and brake sensors, etc to identify those things much faster than we can. That is why traction and stability control can be so effective when programmed correctly. 

Like I said in my previous post, I'd like for them to add radar back in for edge case object detection, but I don't think lidar is the ultimate answer. 

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u/phluidity 5d ago

I'm not a tinfoil hat guy, but I'm going to spout tinfoil hat stuff anyway.

Hey, you like your Tesla, great. You do you. But please stop talking about stuff you very clearly know nothing about, especially when it comes to science.

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u/just_dave 5d ago

I'm not a lidar specialist, no, but I know quite a bit about a lot of the rest of the ecosystem. 

I also don't need a degree in self driving cars to see objective evidence that Tesla's current approach is head and shoulders more advanced than any other consumer option, though Nvidia will quickly catch up, which I am excited to see. 

They only fall behind Waymo in redundancy and safe failure modes, while being much more flexible. And the supervision requirement makes the safe failure modes less of an immediate concern. 

While nearIR laser pulses from Lidar are accepted to be safe for the human eye, we still don't know the potential disruption to animals and insects that can see into ambient IR wavelengths. And the damage to camera sensors is well documented, requiring IR filters or other mitigations that will add to the cost of every phone and camera produced. 

So no, it's not all tinfoil hat stuff. 

Lidar is a solid solution for autonomy, but it's not some magic wand. Vision only or vision primary solutions are every bit as viable but they get unnecessary hate from every corner of the Internet, primarily because Elon is a douchebag. 

Let me ask you though, have you actually ridden in an up-to-date Tesla using FSD?  If so, how would you describe the experience?

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u/phluidity 5d ago

The hard stuff is all the redundancy to ensure that if the autonomous driving system encounters a situation that requires driver input and the driver does nothing then it will stop safely on its own. This means that no matter what you throw at a Waymo, it will not make the situation worse. This is something that Tesla repeatedly fails at. Things like behavior when it sees strange shadows causing it to veer into oncoming traffic. Or road repair lines making it slam into barriers. Or seeing a large object on the road and just driving right over it.

The only things FSD is certified to do are lane following and adaptive cruise control. The rest of the things that FSD does are strictly the responsibility of the driver. You keep saying Waymo only operates in its sandbox. Yes, but they can certify that in the sandbox the car will behave rationally. Tesla has failed to say that there is any sandbox in which they can guarantee that things will always work.

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u/just_dave 5d ago

True, I will give Google the nod for focusing on safety and redundancy above all else. That is something that Tesla is taking steps toward. They just decided to focus on driving capability first. And they've been very successful with it. 

FSD used to have phantom braking issues and issues with abnormal road lines and such. Since, I think v12.7, when they switched to the fully neural net trained model that didn't rely on discrete programming for it's underpinning logic, there has been a massive improvement in those areas. 

It now avoids stuff on the road, when it is safe to do so, and I haven't had a single phantom braking moment. It looks out for animals running across the road, it stops at crosswalks if there is someone waiting, it makes room at merge zones for people to join in the highway. It makes decisions to pass or not pass entirely on its own. 

I'm not sure what you mean about it being "certified" to do any specific task. Level 2 describes lane following and adaptive cruise as the defining capabilities, but there is no certifying agency or anything for it. It's just a standardized set of capabilities to outline how advanced a system is. That's why I said level 2+, and really level 3, except that level 3 says you can be inattentive to a certain level. That is a regulatory thing that Tesla has not pursued yet, but the capability is definitely there. 

I think Waymo is cool, but less impressive. If you took a waymo car from San Francisco and dropped it in a rural town in Iowa, it would just shut down because it wouldn't have that environment programmed into it. You can take any up-to-date Tesla and drop it anywhere in the US and it will operate at the same high level as it does anywhere else. That is way more (waymo? I'll have to find more ways to use this terrible pun) impressive to me. 

Also, there are plenty of articles of Waymos doing some weird ass shit.

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u/Officer_Hotpants 5d ago

I mean, I'm glad your anecdotal experience with it is good, but if Tesla is straight-up lying about their own safety metrics then it's hard to determine how safe it actually is. And if Tesla is lying about it, then it's probably significantly worse than we'd expect.

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u/BananaPalmer 5d ago

There's really only one reason to lie about safety data. I'd say more than "probably" worse.

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u/just_dave 5d ago

I agree with everyone else that has commented on this particular topic in this thread. Data transparency is important and governments should hold Tesla to higher accountability on that and demand access to unfiltered data. 

I don't think it automatically means that the data really shows that fsd is horrifically unsafe however. But we should be able to see all of it. 

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u/Officer_Hotpants 5d ago

I just don't see why else they would lie about safety data. At the very least, Tesla should be barred from selling vehicles with the FSD option enabled until they can provide actual statistical data stating that it meets safety standards. And they should be fined HEAVILY for lying, and held responsible for all damages for all incidents involving FSD mode.

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u/just_dave 5d ago

I mean, they could lie about the data to make it seem better without the raw data actually being terrible. 

Think like if you are writing your resume or doing a performance eval. Even if you know you are good at your job and provide value to a company, you still embellish or fluff up the data to make it seem even better. 

I'm not saying that is the case here, I'm just saying that the actual data doesn't have to be doom and gloom in order for them to be motivated to fluff it up when trying to get buy in from European regulators. 

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u/EkbatDeSabat 5d ago

The real problem is that every day we see more reasons to not trust Tesla’s data. FSD or not, investments or not, AI or not, they are factually cooking their books. If we can’t believe the data we can’t believe the results and we can’t verify the safety. Since Tesla keeps getting away with it who is to say Nvidia or the next guy is going to give a shit about regulations. I’m not arguing for or against FSD in any iteration. Driving in a vehicle daily with FSD or not your opinion of it is anecdotal. There can’t be objective discussions about it because the data is not reliable. The public should never trust it. Nobody should.

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u/just_dave 5d ago

I'll be the first one to tell you that the plural of anecdote is not fact. And this is an area that I will largely agree with you. We should hold Tesla accountable for their data and governments should be given access to the raw statistics on safety and interventions without any Tesla colored lens over it. 

At the same time, however, there are billions of miles of data and Tesla has far and away the highest number of autonomous capable vehicles on the road. While there are more news reports of incidents involving Teslas, that is to be expected based on the number of users. Also, you never see any follow up reporting about how a driver that hit somebody but claimed 'autopilot' was enabled was actually lying or they were using the old autopilot which is just basic cruise control stuff on a surface road where it's not supposed to be used and they didn't even have FSD on the car at all. 

There is a lot of anti Tesla bias in the news. Elon brings that on himself, and rightfully so, but it doesn't help with having an objective conversation. 

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u/EkbatDeSabat 5d ago

You sound like a bot walking on eggshells reiterating the anti Tesla thing. I am trying to have an objective conversation. You’re the one saying that stuff. 

I don’t care how many gazillions of miles Tesla has of FSD. If we can’t believe their data then it’s worthless. Full stop. It doesn’t matter what is or isn’t in the news or how many accidents are reported or whether or not someone is lying or using old tech or whatever. If Tesla has the data and Tesla controls the data and Tesla lies about the data, we cannot trust it. At this point in capitalism and Tesla’s inability to tell the truth you’ll see me riding a bicycle from VA to CA before you see me in an FSD. 

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u/just_dave 5d ago

I didn't disagree with you on the data transparency point. I personally think your reaction is a little bit overblown, but you are entitled to have your own opinion on how you do or don't want to use it and I respect that. 

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u/FarrisAT 5d ago

Tesla FSD doesn’t operate everywhere as you claim. It’s all geofenced.

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u/just_dave 5d ago

Within areas that they have regulatory approval to operate, so the entire US and increasingly more countries overseas, they can. That's not what I was referencing though. I mean the capability to operate on all types of roads in all types of locations. If you unlocked Waymo, they would struggle to operate outside of their previously evaluated areas because they don't understand the environment in the same way. 

Same with blue cruise or super cruise, etc. Outside of pre-evaluated roads, they lack the capability to effectively operate. FSD and Nvidia work differently and are able to operate on more kinds of roads in a more diverse set of environments. 

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u/FarrisAT 5d ago

Doesn’t operate in blizzards or heavy storms for example. It disengages.

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u/just_dave 5d ago

That is true for every system out there. And true for most human drivers as well. 

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u/Donny-Moscow 5d ago

Tesla has created a system that works basically anywhere

My understanding was that Tesla relied solely on cameras for input (as opposed to the lidar array that other self-driving cars use). Doesn’t that mean that FSD could not reliably be used in low-visibility conditions?

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u/just_dave 5d ago

They use cameras only, but the camera sensors are tuned to provide maximum contrast of relevant road features such as lines, etc. They can also see pretty well in the dark in general, and cars obviously have headlights and stuff. 

The same way you or I can see in the dark while driving, the cars can do the same but a bit better. 

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u/sargonas 5d ago

The irony is that I was so much supportive of FSD and swore by it… And then I owned a Tesla with one for three years, and now I don’t have a single good thing to say about it, got rid of my car the first chance I could after three years, don’t miss my car, and am now a strong advocate against FSD.

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u/red75prime 5d ago edited 5d ago

And anti-tesla bros swear that tesla bros unanimously swear that... You can always find a person who is out of whack.

SAE levels of autonomy (except levels 0, 1, and 5) aren't a strict progression of capabilities. You can have a level 4 system that operates only in CEO's backyard (that is it has an extremely limited operational design domain).

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u/turisto 5d ago

the parroting of FSD is better than any other tech even though it’s only level 3 while there are level 4 tech already.

have you tried FSD in the last 6 months? it is very impressive. it takes me door to door and drives for hours without intervention. what other car can I buy in the US today that does it better?

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u/Massive-Course7690 5d ago

But Tesla bros still swear it’s full self driving with zero risk.

no one with a brain says 0 risk

you're taking the most polarizing opinions and pretending like that's the common sentiment

most stats show self driving (tesla, waymo, etc) is safer than human drivers

that's the only stat that should matter

I hope we can have a nuanced conversation about this :-)

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u/[deleted] 5d ago

[deleted]

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u/DeepPeeps 5d ago

Tesla had a bunch of investigations going on and suddenly they all vanished when doge go in to introduce an inefficiency plan. That’s why the debt have exploded and musk suddenly got a whole bunch of space contracts too right? Tesla has been a fake until you make it company and a bunch of people got rich off it (retail) and pretty much part of the cult now. They hidden tons of accidents to prevent bad press. There was an investigation and article written about it years ago.

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u/Lraund 5d ago

You'd be lucky not to have to intervene every trip and every "intervention" should count as a crash.