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There are multiple tells that this move, just like the removal of radar, is supply-chain and cost-driven and not actually driven by engineering. If this were a

by STRML 4y ago

There are multiple tells that this move, just like the removal of radar, is supply-chain and cost-driven and not actually driven by engineering. If this were a planned move, the software would already be ready to replace it. It is not. Cars without radar still aren't at parity with the car that have it, although they "fixed" this a few weeks back by simply turning off the radar on the older cars. The parking sensors on the Tesla are really good and very useful. They show a rough outline of what is around you and are displayed very nicely compared to some other cars. It is a real shame to remove this, and downright dishonest to characterize it as some kind of leap forward. The cheapest bargain-bin cars have this feature. Your $100k+ Model S or X will not. Even more concerning: some features simply cannot be replaced by camera. Tesla infamously does not have a front bumper camera, making it impossible to detect obstructions occluded from view by the hood. For 3/S, which are low, this means it will be impossible to detect low obstructions like too-high concrete wheel stops and similar obstructions. Once the hood has occluded the view from the windshield cameras, these obstructions will cease to exist. Laughable that this is being done on cars from a high-end brand, and that the remedy for customers who are getting worse cars today than you would get yesterday is to wait for these features to "be restored" at some indeterminate time in the future.

pengaru 4y ago
> downright dishonest to characterize it as some kind of leap forward Does anyone expect anything else from Tesla at this point?
- capableweb 4y ago
  Does anyone expect anything else from any corporation? Of course they are not gonna say "I'm sorry, we had to make your experience worse", of course they will try to spin it into something positive. Almost every for-profit company does this. Not to take away that it's shitty, but it's reality.
jmartin2683 4y ago
Not to be rude, but this is so far off base as to be laughable. You don’t have to understand much about how the system works (really no more than what is contained in the last ai day presentation) to understand why none of this is a problem (specifically the occlusion thing).
deleted 4y ago
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drcross 4y ago
When you have a several month wait list for your product, legions of devoted potential customers, if you're head and shoulders above any of your competitors, you're able to get away with things like this.
- hansonkd13 4y ago
  > if you're head and shoulders above any of your competitors, you're able to get away with things like this. The hubris of Tesla is still believing this to be the case. I personally cancelled my cybertruck order from lack of interest. better competition exists in 2022 that wasn’t the case years ago.
  - drcross 4y ago
    Tesla's are outselling every other manufacturer (ICE or otherwise) in many countries for the last quarter and they are still severely supply constrained; your personal antidotal data point doesn't serve much purpose in the broader context.
    - gamblor956 4y ago
      Tesla's own reporting out of China from Friday is that they weren't able to sell all the cars they made...
      - signatoremo 4y ago
        “In Q3, we began transitioning to a more even regional mix of vehicle builds each week, which led to an increase in cars in transit at the end of the quarter. These cars have been ordered and will be delivered to customers upon arrival at their destination” - [0] In other words, they said all of the cars had been ordered, although many were in transition at the end of the quarter. What is your source of what Tesla said in China? [0] - https://ir.tesla.com/press-release/tesla-vehicle-production-deliveries-and-date-financial-results-webcast-third-quarter https://ir.tesla.com/press-release/tesla-vehicle-production-...
aeternum 4y ago
With the removal of radar, they showed some pretty convincing data that the radar was too noisy to be useful, especially with discriminating things like highway overpasses vs. stopped cars. They showed that vision could already outperform radar. With these parking sensors it's different. They have no current alternative and it will cause a pretty significant loss of functionality. Disappointing move.
- sangnoir 4y ago
  > They showed that vision could already outperform radar. Except on emergency vehicles parked in a lane at an oblique angle, which Teslas did not recognize, and plowed into at speed. I wonder what unknown secondary effects this change will bring.
- Qworg 4y ago
  I'd love to see the convincing data RE: radar - they're using the same radars as every other car that has emergency braking from the car in front of the car that's in front of you. I've not heard of many "phantom braking" sessions from these other vehicles - I may have missed something.
  - aeternum 4y ago
    Karpathy covered it during a conference keynote here: https://youtu.be/g6bOwQdCJrc?t=1368 https://youtu.be/g6bOwQdCJrc?t=1368 It also is pretty common with other vehicles, they just don't get as much press as Tesla: https://www.rivianownersforum.com/threads/phantom-braking-anyone.3243/ https://www.rivianownersforum.com/threads/phantom-braking-an... https://www.fox43.com/article/news/feds-try-to-determine-why-popular-nissan-suv-suddenly-brakes-on-its-own/521-c9ec816d-98ed-482d-9118-189cc53d61e9 https://www.fox43.com/article/news/feds-try-to-determine-why...
    - dagmx 4y ago
      However phantom breaking still happens regularly (and perhaps more often) with their vision system. Shadows really mess with it. So I’m not sure that’s very compelling that radar is somehow making things worse for them.
peteradio 4y ago
High-end as defined by what besides price? Not necessarily snark, I haven't heard too much good about fit and finish...
- esotericimpl 4y ago
  This is the thing people dont realize, as someone who has owned a luxury car before, the Tesla Model 3 is not what i would call a "luxury car" despite them playing in the same price space as the BMW 3 Series. It's still one of the best cars i've ever owned but the fit, finish and feel are not luxury. My 2013 Ford Focus felt more solid than the model 3 i own.
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  People who have never driven a car worth more than $50,000 love the luxury feel of their Teslas. It's been really interesting to see how many people had a Tesla as their first expensive car.
  - davewritescode 4y ago
    As a person who’s owned some luxury cars in their life, going from a BMW to a Model3 feels like a really big downgrade in so many ways. I can give a list of reasons why I didn’t buy an M3P at the time but quality, lack of repair options and really shitty interior topped the list. Not having carplay/android auto or satellite radio were minor but still annoying in a car that cost so much money.
    - ericd 4y ago
      We've had the complete opposite experience with our BMW->Tesla move. Sure, the BMW had a very nice interior, that complaint gets a tons of play online, and it's not inaccurate. But you know what just blows that away? Getting into a car on a 100 degree day, and instead of scorching my skin on the leather, like I would with our old BMW, the seat is cold because I tapped a button on my phone 5 minutes before when we were about to head out. That is real luxury, and I appreciate it so much every single time. I stopped noticing the interior of the cars maybe two weeks after I bought each. Maybe that's just me. And the thing is just automatically at a completely perfect temperature when we get into it in the morning. The automatic seat warmers that work in concert with climate control are a newish software feature, but wonderful. Recently, one of our tires developed a bubble in the sidewall due to a curb impact, Tesla sent out a truck and they changed the tire inside our garage a couple hours after we noticed it and told them about it in the app. Not needing to interrupt my day to deal with the issue was a real luxury. Music that picks up right where you left off when you come back. A really efficient heat pump that makes it almost guilt free to just sit in the car and leave the AC running. All the things it enables, like camping mode! AC temperature keep mode! Voice commands that actually work well. A unified interface that controls everything about the car, and allows the voice commands to do everything from temperature changes to music searches to activating child window locks because our toddler needs to stop rolling down the windows and I can't take my eyes off the road to hunt for a setting (the voice commands obviated my biggest worry, the loss of physical controls). There are just so many nice little touches that just work, and add up to make the experience much better than a BMW with carplay. I miss the exhaust note, the hardtop, the nice leather, fit and finish, but I would still choose the Tesla 10/10 times. And that would be the case against any legacy carmaker vehicle, except to go the complete opposite direction with full physical controls, basic radio, and no infotainment system at all. The legacy carmakers are still quite good at bolting together the mechanical components.
m463 4y ago
> The parking sensors on the Tesla are really good and very useful. I respectfully disagree. I think their primary use case is parking. Tesla does a really good job with automatic parking, and it IS useful especially for parallel parking. But honestly, I have curbed my rims and hung up my underbody front spoiler on a curb and they did not help. Really there is an opportunity for cameras to protect the car from nearby curbs and park in the same way. But like you said, current telsa camera placement doesn't have enough coverage, especially in front. At a minimum, I think they should add a front camera if they're going to remove the ultrasonic sensors. and realistically, they should solve the ultrasonic problem of curbs with the cameras.
- dagmx 4y ago
  Tesla is probably the WORST at automatic parking. Here’s a comparison against some other competitors. https://youtu.be/nsb2XBAIWyA https://youtu.be/nsb2XBAIWyA My own model Y has maybe successfully automatically parked 2/10 times. Most of my friends and coworkers have similarly low success rates.
  - 2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
    I'm surprised the they pulled out an older Tesla and that parked quite well after all the duds.
    - justapassenger 4y ago
      Old Tesla was using mobileye systems, that powers half of the automotive world. Tesla later started to abuse it, mobileye got angry and they stopped working together. Since then Tesla's tech is in house and in many aspects still behind 10 years old product.
  - cycomanic 4y ago
    This is pure comedy, thanks for posting.
  - m463 4y ago
    autopilot v1 does pretty well, and it does it entirely via the ultrasonic sensors afaik. I don't know how v2 and v3 work in practical comparison.
petilon 4y ago
> There are multiple tells that this move, just like the removal of radar, is supply-chain and cost-driven and not actually driven by engineering. Not true. Elon Musk has long maintained that cameras/vision is all that is needed [1]. After all, that's all a human has. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/22/anyone-relying-on-lidar-is-doomed-elon-musk-says/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/22/anyone-relying-on-lidar-is...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- ouEight12 4y ago
  > After all, that's all a human has. As a human that has only eyes, I've smashed the underside of my front bumper on many a curb over the years in various cars because just sight alone, blocked by the hood and front end of a car is a crappy way of judging things like that. I say this as someone who absolutely loves his Model3.. but a step back is a step back, no matter how one spins it. Radar-delete was a user experience negative for me as well. My autopilot experience today is far more 'jerky jerk' in terms of stop/go traffic than it ever was in the glory days of 'radar distancing data', so much so that AP is now banned on anything but 'smooth sailing highway driving' when I have certain motion sick vulnerable individuals in the car. Add on to that it's now (rightfully, given it's lost the radar available data) far more touchy about weather conditions before it'll even engage. :(
  - petilon 4y ago
    Absolutely agree. I think all self-driving cars should be required to have LiDARs. I was just reporting what Musk said: "Elon Musk reportedly demanded cameras over radar in self-driving cars because human eyes don't rely on radar" [1]. Are the down-votes intended for Musk? [1] https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/elon-musk-reportedly-demanded-cameras-over-radar-in-self-driving-cars-because-human-eyes-dont-rely-on-radar/articleshow/88130048.cms https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/elon-musk-reportedl...
    - kadoban 4y ago
pclmulqdq 4y ago
It looks like they are transparently trying to raise their margins. I guess they are more supply-constrained than they thought. The "smart car of the future" from Tesla now has no sensors other than cameras, and not very many of those.
- tablespoon 4y ago
  > It looks like they are transparently trying to raise their margins. I guess they are more supply-constrained than they thought. The "smart car of the future" from Tesla now has no sensors other than cameras, and not very many of those. Don't worry, it won't be a problem as long as they can keep the marketing budget up.
  - nradov 4y ago
    Tesla's marketing budget is actually very small and even decreased last year. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000156459021004599/tsla-10k_20201231.htm https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000156459021...
    - ctvo 4y ago
      Their marketing is mostly Elon Musk. He uses Twitter for this and it has cost him / them quite a bit. From fines by the SEC, to potentially 45 billion USD for the purchase of the platform.
ajross 4y ago
So... your first sentence is very likely true. But it doesn't match your argument two paragraphs down: > The cheapest bargain-bin cars have this feature. Your $100k+ Model S or X will not. If cheap "bargain-bin" cars have these things, then there is no supply chain problem. In fact it's likely these parts aren't available in quantity anywhere right now and every manufacturer is having to deal with it. It's just not news when Ford has to rejigger options on a bunch of models to adjust to demand. But with Tesla, yikes. It's just so exhausting the level of emotion this brand drives. Every decision they make is An Affront to All Sensibility to someone, it seems like. FWIW: I like the parking sensors too, they're helpful. But good grief, maybe tone down the outrage?
- justapassenger 4y ago
  It’s not a news, because Ford doesn’t sell supply chain shenanigans as a feature. Tesla does, multiple times already.
- hef19898 4y ago
  One company can have supply chain issues while another does not, even in the same region for the same parts from the same suppliers. Crazy, I know.
- ethanbond 4y ago
  Could you share a source about Ford removing safety sensors on cars that were already ordered?
  - ajross 4y ago
    Ford doesn't sell cars directly. Dealers get what they get, and if this month's new cars don't have Package A then they won't sell that. This happens all the time, just go to any auto manufacturer site and configure the car you want, then call your local dealers to find one. I all but guarantee you you'll find some option package that is supposed to be available but isn't anywhere you can buy it. And that's my point. No one cares about that, it's just not news. It's "the way the auto industry works". Except for Tesla. Then it's an existential disaster. It's just exhausting.
throwawaylinux 4y ago
In what world is cost and supply chain not engineering?!?
jaimex2 4y ago
Not really, both USS and Radar give unreliable output. The cars you mention would all have phantom beeping from the USS and unreliable adaptive cruise where the radar suddenly doesn't see the car ahead. The Tesla vision on the other hand works like a more focused human driver. It can remember that wheel stop is there. Agree they shouldn't have jumped the gun with production till it was ready though. While the USS sensors are crap they probably should keep them for things like small children playing behind cars.
- justapassenger 4y ago
  Vision also gives you unreliable output. Real world is messy and hard - sensor fusion and dealing with unreliable data is bread and butter. No one said it’s easy to build that stuff. Well, no one expect for Elon Musk to be more precise.
  - jaimex2 4y ago
    That last thing you want is two systems arguing about what they see. Also its lame to downvote for disagreeing.
    - hef19898 4y ago
      Like MCAS and the 737 MAX? That system didn't argue with itself neither. EDIT: Downvoting for disagreeing is fine, according to pg himself.
    - justapassenger 4y ago
      Do you prefer to have one system that’s confidently wrong in specific circumstances then? Sensing of real world is really hard. Sensor fusion is a whole discipline.
    - numpad0 4y ago
      That’s why you put in triple redundancy…
    - dmitriid 4y ago
luckydata 4y ago
just a mention that I have a Model 3 with USS and it can't detect low obstacles like concrete stops either.
panick21_ 4y ago
> Cars without radar still aren't at parity with the car that have it Tesla Vision outperformed Tesla with Radar in the official tests.
- fredoliveira 4y ago
  I guess I'll do the obvious and ask for a source. I saw the Tesla Vision keynote from Karpathy, if that's what you mean. Wouldn't call that a source for "official" tests.
  - panick21_ 4y ago
    The Tesla Vision only was tested by some state agency and has a higher score then the radar one. But only in terms of safety, I guess the software does other aspect as well. There should be Tesla blog post about it or something.
    - oittaa 4y ago
      > some state agency Euro NCAP tested it. It doesn't get more official than that around here. https://www.euroncap.com/en/results/tesla/model+y/46618 https://www.euroncap.com/en/results/tesla/model+y/46618
rob74 4y ago
> The parking sensors on the Tesla are really good and very useful. They show a rough outline of what is around you and are displayed very nicely compared to some other cars. It is a real shame to remove this, and downright dishonest to characterize it as some kind of leap forward. My 4 year old Ford Focus doesn't show an outline of obstacles around the car, but still provides Park Assist and Autopark. Especially Park Assist is something that everyone expects from every reasonably equipped car nowadays. So yeah, maybe understandable if it's due to supply difficulties, but still a bad move...
- a_t48 4y ago
  My 2021 Jetta GLI doesn't have these features. :(
davedx 4y ago
> The parking sensors on the Tesla are really good and very useful. They show a rough outline of what is around you and are displayed very nicely compared to some other cars. It is a real shame to remove this, Perhaps the occupancy network is a good replacement? You're characterizing this as if Tesla Vision won't ever be able to replace it: "impossible to detect obstructions occluded from view by the hood". What if the neural net persists where everything in the world is, and can extrapolate where objects are as the car moves? Then it's better than cameras, blind spots would actually be reduced. I agree it's a dick move to remove it on cars that were already ordered though. Very Tesla.
- ethanbond 4y ago
  I mean how do we know they’re not going to just staple human eyes and brains to the car and then it’ll be way better than what’s on the market today? Why dream up hypotheticals of how this is good when it’s actually just… bad?
- zaptrem 4y ago
  What happens when a small object rolls into that blindspot? What happens when the car goes into deep sleep and the AP computer state is lost? Reloading all those nets takes like 40 seconds on startup from deep sleep.
rbanffy 4y ago
> There are multiple tells that this move, just like the removal of radar, is supply-chain and cost-driven and not actually driven by engineering. I like the idea of coalescing multiple sensors into one, but I can't shake off the idea that relying on vision alone when you can sense depth through US or LIDAR is a terrible idea. You can fake depth data from multiple cameras, but it takes more processing and additional input should be a good thing. Did anyone ever try to fool a Tesla using the Looney Tunes painted tunnel trick? > Once the hood has occluded the view from the windshield cameras, these obstructions will cease to exist. Any sensible navigation software should "know" objects don't cease to exist. I hope Tesla's does it.
LeifCarrotson 4y ago
> Once the hood has occluded the view from the windshield cameras, these obstructions will cease to exist. I have observed that this is how vision is currently implemented, but does it have to be this way? I can pull up to a concrete wheel stop in my Toyota without vision and without the sonar enabled even though my eyesight is occluded by the hood because I know where it was and how far I have moved. Concrete wheel stops do not flicker out of existence when you stop looking at them, they should be able to monitor the wheel speed sensors and shift the 3D map of the world into your camera blind spots, perhaps showing a "hidden" wireframe on the cameras. It would be inconvenient if you were unable to pull forward because a tumbleweed or (more likely) plastic bag rolled through, but you could back up and try again or the human could decide to ignore the beeping. Granted, I'm not a domain expert, but we do this in my field of industrial robotics when building models with 3D vision. The computer can composite multiple profiles into a single higher-resolution image, can return data about that model when the camera on the EOAT has moved such that the field of view is limited, and can provide faults when the model does not match a previous image because something has been added or removed while the camera wasn't watching.
- gizmo 4y ago
  Possible, sure. But not trivial, and there is no pressing need to get rid of these sensors right now. Why the rush, if there is no supply chain issue?
- stetrain 4y ago
  The inverse is an issue though. The car parks and turns off, with no obstacles in front. While parked a child/dog/bucket of concrete materializes directly in the front blindspot. Next time the car drives, it has no knowledge of this obstruction. This isn't a huge problem for a car driven by a human, since you can and should check around the car before driving, or will have other context clues that there is a child or dog or whatever running around your car, but this seems incompatible with the stated goal of making all current cars into Robotaxis.
captainmuon 4y ago
It would be possible to use cameras instead of ultrasound, but that would require mounting a lot more cameras in the dead zones as you said. One of the coolest things I've seen was on a BYD, which has cameras mounted pointing downwards all around. It then creates a fake birdseye view when you are parking, or close to an obstacle. It looked really convincing, as if there was a drone above the car.
- moffkalast 4y ago
  https://youtube.com/watch?v=BBJr8LkM-4I&feature=share&utm_source=EKLEiJECCKjOmKnC5IiRIQ&t=234 https://youtube.com/watch?v=BBJr8LkM-4I&feature=share&utm_so... I mean damn that looks legit. I'd like to see how it performs at night when you're trying to park in some unlit parking lot, but otherwise that's a pretty amazing projection right there. The dream of driving in 3rd person view is finally here.
- ryukoposting 4y ago
  I had a Lexus ES 350 loaner the last time my (22 year old) Lexus was in the shop- it had the same feature you describe in the BYD. There was obviously some stretching/warping trickery being done to create the birds-eye image, but it was really impressive regardless.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
nopenopenopeno 4y ago
like being first in line to buy a touch bar macbook pro

by STRML 4y ago

pengaru 4y ago

> downright dishonest to characterize it as some kind of leap forward Does anyone expect anything else from Tesla at this point?

capableweb 4y ago
Does anyone expect anything else from any corporation? Of course they are not gonna say "I'm sorry, we had to make your experience worse", of course they will try to spin it into something positive. Almost every for-profit company does this. Not to take away that it's shitty, but it's reality.

jmartin2683 4y ago

Not to be rude, but this is so far off base as to be laughable. You don’t have to understand much about how the system works (really no more than what is contained in the last ai day presentation) to understand why none of this is a problem (specifically the occlusion thing).

deleted 4y ago

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drcross 4y ago

When you have a several month wait list for your product, legions of devoted potential customers, if you're head and shoulders above any of your competitors, you're able to get away with things like this.

hansonkd13 4y ago
> if you're head and shoulders above any of your competitors, you're able to get away with things like this. The hubris of Tesla is still believing this to be the case. I personally cancelled my cybertruck order from lack of interest. better competition exists in 2022 that wasn’t the case years ago.
- drcross 4y ago
  Tesla's are outselling every other manufacturer (ICE or otherwise) in many countries for the last quarter and they are still severely supply constrained; your personal antidotal data point doesn't serve much purpose in the broader context.
  - gamblor956 4y ago
    Tesla's own reporting out of China from Friday is that they weren't able to sell all the cars they made...
    - signatoremo 4y ago
      “In Q3, we began transitioning to a more even regional mix of vehicle builds each week, which led to an increase in cars in transit at the end of the quarter. These cars have been ordered and will be delivered to customers upon arrival at their destination” - [0] In other words, they said all of the cars had been ordered, although many were in transition at the end of the quarter. What is your source of what Tesla said in China? [0] - https://ir.tesla.com/press-release/tesla-vehicle-production-deliveries-and-date-financial-results-webcast-third-quarter https://ir.tesla.com/press-release/tesla-vehicle-production-...

aeternum 4y ago

With the removal of radar, they showed some pretty convincing data that the radar was too noisy to be useful, especially with discriminating things like highway overpasses vs. stopped cars. They showed that vision could already outperform radar. With these parking sensors it's different. They have no current alternative and it will cause a pretty significant loss of functionality. Disappointing move.

sangnoir 4y ago
> They showed that vision could already outperform radar. Except on emergency vehicles parked in a lane at an oblique angle, which Teslas did not recognize, and plowed into at speed. I wonder what unknown secondary effects this change will bring.
Qworg 4y ago
I'd love to see the convincing data RE: radar - they're using the same radars as every other car that has emergency braking from the car in front of the car that's in front of you. I've not heard of many "phantom braking" sessions from these other vehicles - I may have missed something.
- aeternum 4y ago
  Karpathy covered it during a conference keynote here: https://youtu.be/g6bOwQdCJrc?t=1368 https://youtu.be/g6bOwQdCJrc?t=1368 It also is pretty common with other vehicles, they just don't get as much press as Tesla: https://www.rivianownersforum.com/threads/phantom-braking-anyone.3243/ https://www.rivianownersforum.com/threads/phantom-braking-an... https://www.fox43.com/article/news/feds-try-to-determine-why-popular-nissan-suv-suddenly-brakes-on-its-own/521-c9ec816d-98ed-482d-9118-189cc53d61e9 https://www.fox43.com/article/news/feds-try-to-determine-why...
  - dagmx 4y ago
    However phantom breaking still happens regularly (and perhaps more often) with their vision system. Shadows really mess with it. So I’m not sure that’s very compelling that radar is somehow making things worse for them.

peteradio 4y ago

High-end as defined by what besides price? Not necessarily snark, I haven't heard too much good about fit and finish...

esotericimpl 4y ago
This is the thing people dont realize, as someone who has owned a luxury car before, the Tesla Model 3 is not what i would call a "luxury car" despite them playing in the same price space as the BMW 3 Series. It's still one of the best cars i've ever owned but the fit, finish and feel are not luxury. My 2013 Ford Focus felt more solid than the model 3 i own.
pclmulqdq 4y ago
People who have never driven a car worth more than $50,000 love the luxury feel of their Teslas. It's been really interesting to see how many people had a Tesla as their first expensive car.
- davewritescode 4y ago
  As a person who’s owned some luxury cars in their life, going from a BMW to a Model3 feels like a really big downgrade in so many ways. I can give a list of reasons why I didn’t buy an M3P at the time but quality, lack of repair options and really shitty interior topped the list. Not having carplay/android auto or satellite radio were minor but still annoying in a car that cost so much money.
  - ericd 4y ago
    We've had the complete opposite experience with our BMW->Tesla move. Sure, the BMW had a very nice interior, that complaint gets a tons of play online, and it's not inaccurate. But you know what just blows that away? Getting into a car on a 100 degree day, and instead of scorching my skin on the leather, like I would with our old BMW, the seat is cold because I tapped a button on my phone 5 minutes before when we were about to head out. That is real luxury, and I appreciate it so much every single time. I stopped noticing the interior of the cars maybe two weeks after I bought each. Maybe that's just me. And the thing is just automatically at a completely perfect temperature when we get into it in the morning. The automatic seat warmers that work in concert with climate control are a newish software feature, but wonderful. Recently, one of our tires developed a bubble in the sidewall due to a curb impact, Tesla sent out a truck and they changed the tire inside our garage a couple hours after we noticed it and told them about it in the app. Not needing to interrupt my day to deal with the issue was a real luxury. Music that picks up right where you left off when you come back. A really efficient heat pump that makes it almost guilt free to just sit in the car and leave the AC running. All the things it enables, like camping mode! AC temperature keep mode! Voice commands that actually work well. A unified interface that controls everything about the car, and allows the voice commands to do everything from temperature changes to music searches to activating child window locks because our toddler needs to stop rolling down the windows and I can't take my eyes off the road to hunt for a setting (the voice commands obviated my biggest worry, the loss of physical controls). There are just so many nice little touches that just work, and add up to make the experience much better than a BMW with carplay. I miss the exhaust note, the hardtop, the nice leather, fit and finish, but I would still choose the Tesla 10/10 times. And that would be the case against any legacy carmaker vehicle, except to go the complete opposite direction with full physical controls, basic radio, and no infotainment system at all. The legacy carmakers are still quite good at bolting together the mechanical components.

m463 4y ago

> The parking sensors on the Tesla are really good and very useful. I respectfully disagree. I think their primary use case is parking. Tesla does a really good job with automatic parking, and it IS useful especially for parallel parking. But honestly, I have curbed my rims and hung up my underbody front spoiler on a curb and they did not help. Really there is an opportunity for cameras to protect the car from nearby curbs and park in the same way. But like you said, current telsa camera placement doesn't have enough coverage, especially in front. At a minimum, I think they should add a front camera if they're going to remove the ultrasonic sensors. and realistically, they should solve the ultrasonic problem of curbs with the cameras.

dagmx 4y ago
Tesla is probably the WORST at automatic parking. Here’s a comparison against some other competitors. https://youtu.be/nsb2XBAIWyA https://youtu.be/nsb2XBAIWyA My own model Y has maybe successfully automatically parked 2/10 times. Most of my friends and coworkers have similarly low success rates.
- 2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
  I'm surprised the they pulled out an older Tesla and that parked quite well after all the duds.
  - justapassenger 4y ago
    Old Tesla was using mobileye systems, that powers half of the automotive world. Tesla later started to abuse it, mobileye got angry and they stopped working together. Since then Tesla's tech is in house and in many aspects still behind 10 years old product.
- cycomanic 4y ago
  This is pure comedy, thanks for posting.
- m463 4y ago
  autopilot v1 does pretty well, and it does it entirely via the ultrasonic sensors afaik. I don't know how v2 and v3 work in practical comparison.

petilon 4y ago

> There are multiple tells that this move, just like the removal of radar, is supply-chain and cost-driven and not actually driven by engineering. Not true. Elon Musk has long maintained that cameras/vision is all that is needed [1]. After all, that's all a human has. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/22/anyone-relying-on-lidar-is-doomed-elon-musk-says/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/22/anyone-relying-on-lidar-is...

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ouEight12 4y ago
> After all, that's all a human has. As a human that has only eyes, I've smashed the underside of my front bumper on many a curb over the years in various cars because just sight alone, blocked by the hood and front end of a car is a crappy way of judging things like that. I say this as someone who absolutely loves his Model3.. but a step back is a step back, no matter how one spins it. Radar-delete was a user experience negative for me as well. My autopilot experience today is far more 'jerky jerk' in terms of stop/go traffic than it ever was in the glory days of 'radar distancing data', so much so that AP is now banned on anything but 'smooth sailing highway driving' when I have certain motion sick vulnerable individuals in the car. Add on to that it's now (rightfully, given it's lost the radar available data) far more touchy about weather conditions before it'll even engage. :(
- petilon 4y ago
  Absolutely agree. I think all self-driving cars should be required to have LiDARs. I was just reporting what Musk said: "Elon Musk reportedly demanded cameras over radar in self-driving cars because human eyes don't rely on radar" [1]. Are the down-votes intended for Musk? [1] https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/elon-musk-reportedly-demanded-cameras-over-radar-in-self-driving-cars-because-human-eyes-dont-rely-on-radar/articleshow/88130048.cms https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/elon-musk-reportedl...
  - kadoban 4y ago

pclmulqdq 4y ago

It looks like they are transparently trying to raise their margins. I guess they are more supply-constrained than they thought. The "smart car of the future" from Tesla now has no sensors other than cameras, and not very many of those.

tablespoon 4y ago
> It looks like they are transparently trying to raise their margins. I guess they are more supply-constrained than they thought. The "smart car of the future" from Tesla now has no sensors other than cameras, and not very many of those. Don't worry, it won't be a problem as long as they can keep the marketing budget up.
- nradov 4y ago
  Tesla's marketing budget is actually very small and even decreased last year. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000156459021004599/tsla-10k_20201231.htm https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000156459021...
  - ctvo 4y ago
    Their marketing is mostly Elon Musk. He uses Twitter for this and it has cost him / them quite a bit. From fines by the SEC, to potentially 45 billion USD for the purchase of the platform.

ajross 4y ago

So... your first sentence is very likely true. But it doesn't match your argument two paragraphs down: > The cheapest bargain-bin cars have this feature. Your $100k+ Model S or X will not. If cheap "bargain-bin" cars have these things, then there is no supply chain problem. In fact it's likely these parts aren't available in quantity anywhere right now and every manufacturer is having to deal with it. It's just not news when Ford has to rejigger options on a bunch of models to adjust to demand. But with Tesla, yikes. It's just so exhausting the level of emotion this brand drives. Every decision they make is An Affront to All Sensibility to someone, it seems like. FWIW: I like the parking sensors too, they're helpful. But good grief, maybe tone down the outrage?

justapassenger 4y ago
It’s not a news, because Ford doesn’t sell supply chain shenanigans as a feature. Tesla does, multiple times already.
hef19898 4y ago
One company can have supply chain issues while another does not, even in the same region for the same parts from the same suppliers. Crazy, I know.
ethanbond 4y ago
Could you share a source about Ford removing safety sensors on cars that were already ordered?
- ajross 4y ago
  Ford doesn't sell cars directly. Dealers get what they get, and if this month's new cars don't have Package A then they won't sell that. This happens all the time, just go to any auto manufacturer site and configure the car you want, then call your local dealers to find one. I all but guarantee you you'll find some option package that is supposed to be available but isn't anywhere you can buy it. And that's my point. No one cares about that, it's just not news. It's "the way the auto industry works". Except for Tesla. Then it's an existential disaster. It's just exhausting.

throwawaylinux 4y ago

In what world is cost and supply chain not engineering?!?

jaimex2 4y ago

Not really, both USS and Radar give unreliable output. The cars you mention would all have phantom beeping from the USS and unreliable adaptive cruise where the radar suddenly doesn't see the car ahead. The Tesla vision on the other hand works like a more focused human driver. It can remember that wheel stop is there. Agree they shouldn't have jumped the gun with production till it was ready though. While the USS sensors are crap they probably should keep them for things like small children playing behind cars.

justapassenger 4y ago
Vision also gives you unreliable output. Real world is messy and hard - sensor fusion and dealing with unreliable data is bread and butter. No one said it’s easy to build that stuff. Well, no one expect for Elon Musk to be more precise.
- jaimex2 4y ago
  That last thing you want is two systems arguing about what they see. Also its lame to downvote for disagreeing.
  - hef19898 4y ago
    Like MCAS and the 737 MAX? That system didn't argue with itself neither. EDIT: Downvoting for disagreeing is fine, according to pg himself.
  - justapassenger 4y ago
    Do you prefer to have one system that’s confidently wrong in specific circumstances then? Sensing of real world is really hard. Sensor fusion is a whole discipline.
  - numpad0 4y ago
    That’s why you put in triple redundancy…
  - dmitriid 4y ago

luckydata 4y ago

just a mention that I have a Model 3 with USS and it can't detect low obstacles like concrete stops either.

panick21_ 4y ago

> Cars without radar still aren't at parity with the car that have it Tesla Vision outperformed Tesla with Radar in the official tests.

fredoliveira 4y ago
I guess I'll do the obvious and ask for a source. I saw the Tesla Vision keynote from Karpathy, if that's what you mean. Wouldn't call that a source for "official" tests.
- panick21_ 4y ago
  The Tesla Vision only was tested by some state agency and has a higher score then the radar one. But only in terms of safety, I guess the software does other aspect as well. There should be Tesla blog post about it or something.
  - oittaa 4y ago
    > some state agency Euro NCAP tested it. It doesn't get more official than that around here. https://www.euroncap.com/en/results/tesla/model+y/46618 https://www.euroncap.com/en/results/tesla/model+y/46618

rob74 4y ago

> The parking sensors on the Tesla are really good and very useful. They show a rough outline of what is around you and are displayed very nicely compared to some other cars. It is a real shame to remove this, and downright dishonest to characterize it as some kind of leap forward. My 4 year old Ford Focus doesn't show an outline of obstacles around the car, but still provides Park Assist and Autopark. Especially Park Assist is something that everyone expects from every reasonably equipped car nowadays. So yeah, maybe understandable if it's due to supply difficulties, but still a bad move...

a_t48 4y ago
My 2021 Jetta GLI doesn't have these features. :(

davedx 4y ago

> The parking sensors on the Tesla are really good and very useful. They show a rough outline of what is around you and are displayed very nicely compared to some other cars. It is a real shame to remove this, Perhaps the occupancy network is a good replacement? You're characterizing this as if Tesla Vision won't ever be able to replace it: "impossible to detect obstructions occluded from view by the hood". What if the neural net persists where everything in the world is, and can extrapolate where objects are as the car moves? Then it's better than cameras, blind spots would actually be reduced. I agree it's a dick move to remove it on cars that were already ordered though. Very Tesla.

ethanbond 4y ago
I mean how do we know they’re not going to just staple human eyes and brains to the car and then it’ll be way better than what’s on the market today? Why dream up hypotheticals of how this is good when it’s actually just… bad?
zaptrem 4y ago
What happens when a small object rolls into that blindspot? What happens when the car goes into deep sleep and the AP computer state is lost? Reloading all those nets takes like 40 seconds on startup from deep sleep.

rbanffy 4y ago

> There are multiple tells that this move, just like the removal of radar, is supply-chain and cost-driven and not actually driven by engineering. I like the idea of coalescing multiple sensors into one, but I can't shake off the idea that relying on vision alone when you can sense depth through US or LIDAR is a terrible idea. You can fake depth data from multiple cameras, but it takes more processing and additional input should be a good thing. Did anyone ever try to fool a Tesla using the Looney Tunes painted tunnel trick? > Once the hood has occluded the view from the windshield cameras, these obstructions will cease to exist. Any sensible navigation software should "know" objects don't cease to exist. I hope Tesla's does it.

LeifCarrotson 4y ago

> Once the hood has occluded the view from the windshield cameras, these obstructions will cease to exist. I have observed that this is how vision is currently implemented, but does it have to be this way? I can pull up to a concrete wheel stop in my Toyota without vision and without the sonar enabled even though my eyesight is occluded by the hood because I know where it was and how far I have moved. Concrete wheel stops do not flicker out of existence when you stop looking at them, they should be able to monitor the wheel speed sensors and shift the 3D map of the world into your camera blind spots, perhaps showing a "hidden" wireframe on the cameras. It would be inconvenient if you were unable to pull forward because a tumbleweed or (more likely) plastic bag rolled through, but you could back up and try again or the human could decide to ignore the beeping. Granted, I'm not a domain expert, but we do this in my field of industrial robotics when building models with 3D vision. The computer can composite multiple profiles into a single higher-resolution image, can return data about that model when the camera on the EOAT has moved such that the field of view is limited, and can provide faults when the model does not match a previous image because something has been added or removed while the camera wasn't watching.

gizmo 4y ago
Possible, sure. But not trivial, and there is no pressing need to get rid of these sensors right now. Why the rush, if there is no supply chain issue?
stetrain 4y ago
The inverse is an issue though. The car parks and turns off, with no obstacles in front. While parked a child/dog/bucket of concrete materializes directly in the front blindspot. Next time the car drives, it has no knowledge of this obstruction. This isn't a huge problem for a car driven by a human, since you can and should check around the car before driving, or will have other context clues that there is a child or dog or whatever running around your car, but this seems incompatible with the stated goal of making all current cars into Robotaxis.

captainmuon 4y ago

It would be possible to use cameras instead of ultrasound, but that would require mounting a lot more cameras in the dead zones as you said. One of the coolest things I've seen was on a BYD, which has cameras mounted pointing downwards all around. It then creates a fake birdseye view when you are parking, or close to an obstacle. It looked really convincing, as if there was a drone above the car.

moffkalast 4y ago
https://youtube.com/watch?v=BBJr8LkM-4I&feature=share&utm_source=EKLEiJECCKjOmKnC5IiRIQ&t=234 https://youtube.com/watch?v=BBJr8LkM-4I&feature=share&utm_so... I mean damn that looks legit. I'd like to see how it performs at night when you're trying to park in some unlit parking lot, but otherwise that's a pretty amazing projection right there. The dream of driving in 3rd person view is finally here.
ryukoposting 4y ago
I had a Lexus ES 350 loaner the last time my (22 year old) Lexus was in the shop- it had the same feature you describe in the BYD. There was obviously some stretching/warping trickery being done to create the birds-eye image, but it was really impressive regardless.

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nopenopenopeno 4y ago

like being first in line to buy a touch bar macbook pro