Why Tesla Autopilot shouldn't be used in as many places as you think (opens in new tab)

He's already sold many thousands of FSD upgrades with the claim that the cars would be worth multiple times their purchase cost because they could be an Uber-like self-driving 'goldmine' for their owners when they would be updated by 2022-23. Yet last year and this were full of news about how badly FSD forks up events such as left turns and encountering fire trucks.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and Musk really hasn't put up anything more than smoke and mirrors.

If you want to go further, he's also choosing to be a very public liar. E.g., when Alex Jones first wanted to come back to Twitter, Musk's public response was “My firstborn child died in my arms. I felt his last heartbeat, I have no mercy for anyone who would use the deaths of children for gain, politics or fame.” That is as crystal clear a statement as one could make that Alex Jones and vile liars and child-death profiteers like him are unwelcome — permanently. Yet, today less than two years later, Jones' account was restored. That's just the most recent egregious lie.

So yes, making vaporware claims and taking money for them without fulfillment, and publicly lying about things people care a lot about, often merits additional scrutiny.

Most adaptive cruise is “simple” distance plus “simple” check for lines. It’s intuitive and generally easy to understand when it will and will not work.

For me, Tesla does soooo much stuff that it’s hard to figure out if I should plan to intervene.

Yep. For everyone who says, "even with the crashes Autopilot is responsible for, human drivers are still statistically more dangerous!", my response is, "how the fuck do you know given that we've had to pull the truth out of these companies like teeth?"

- 35 year old, in their prime, old enough to no longer be aggressive, but young enough to be sharp and focused.

- 85 year old, losing vision, reflexes, and slightly senile

Mostly, what I'd like to see is liability for crashes placed on Tesla. If I kill someone, my insurance pays. If a self-driving car kills someone, manufacturer / manufacturer's insurance pays. That prevents them from offloading costs and incentivizes things like retrofitting safety upgrades.

Costs to consumer are the same in both cases, whether it's my insurance premium or whether it's baked into the selling price of the car.