It finally happened A Tesla car that crashed and killed the driver was running on Autopilot

commando1 said:
Here is the "driver" of the autonomous Uber car... The one that killed the pedestrian.

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On her smartphone catching up on Facebook.
Only a moron would believe this is workable.
Politicians are getting bought off big time.
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Politicians voted on the subsidies to pay for this nonsense. Same old mother hen mentality, people are too stupid to drive cars, so we will let the cars drive themselves. Probably hoping to compensate for Ted Kennedy types.

Dave
 
Big_John said:
The car insurance OB2 plug in module is the one that gets me... I'm waiting for that to be mandatory to get car insurance.
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The car insurance plug ins like Snapshot or the phone apps. Beware. What they track can come back to bite you not only in the event of an accident but too much high speed driving will likely result in your rates going up. Trust me, I know this to be true.
 
Fury440 said:
The basic problem I see with self driving cars; they lack intuition and the ability to develop experience. A brand new human driver has to be able to recite the rules of the road and show they understand the rudiments of how to steer, brake, park. More advanced operations such as merging, night driving and bad weather driving they are expected to "pick up" as they gain experience. Sadly many never master these "advanced" operations.

I have driven for about 60 years and learned all of those skills and along the way have developed the ability to "read" the road to anticipate situations before they happen. I call this gut feel, but its really knowledge accumulated from my own mistakes and/or the mistakes of others. I think you all know what I'm trying to describe. Anyway, the difference between a safe driver and the disaster on wheels driver, is the good driver's ability to pay attention while driving and to develop a gut feel. Unfortunately many drivers fail to reach this plateau!

I have been involved with the design and programming of various computer systems since the mid 60's and have watched and experienced many unbelievable computer and programming advances. However, I've also seen many total disasters which do eventually get ironed out, Microsoft's "plug'n play" being a great example. A fairly simple concept that took nearly 20 years to become "mostly" reliable. I suggest so called "smart cars" are a long way from being able to develop "gut feel", first they need to learn how to follow a road without running into concrete lane
dividers.

Final thoughts, if gut experience is a side effect of experience, will the older model smart cars always be smarter than the new ones? Will the new ones need to attend "school" like our children? Will car school have 12 grades and then college degrees covering special cases like gravel roads, ice roads, mountain roads and bush trails? What happens if the batteries run out, does the highly trained smart car reboot to factory specs and have to restart in kindergarten?

Fortunately for me, I'll probably not live long enough to have to experience any of this, but I do worry for my grand-children.
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I wonder if Elon Musk is going to use the same auto pilot on Space=X to get himself to Mars?

Dave
 
FURYGT said:
The car insurance plug ins like Snapshot or the phone apps. Beware. What they track can come back to bite you not only in the event of an accident but too much high speed driving will likely result in your rates going up. Trust me, I know this to be true.
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I would be willing to bet the the government somehow collects all that data so they can track people's movements if they want to. Those systems use GPS to track location and compare it to posted speed limits and the time it should take to get from point A to point B.

Dave
 
We don't need self-driving cars, we need less idiot drivers on our roads.
 
When all these auto assist become the norm the insurance companies will jack the rates on all those high risk cars, us!


Alan
 
FURYGT said:
The car insurance plug ins like Snapshot or the phone apps. Beware. What they track can come back to bite you not only in the event of an accident but too much high speed driving will likely result in your rates going up. Trust me, I know this to be true.
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These are the greatest. They totally play off the ego, everyone thinks they can drive better than the moron in the next lane. The reality is they drive worse than you. Even if you drive like you have raw eggs everywhere in the car your still a hazard. I would love to see the data log against a video of any average Joe that thinks they are driving well. And how the insurance Co overlays it to raise rates.
 
Davea Lux said:
Tesla motors was already on life support because of financial mismanagement. They lose money on every vehicle they sell. Markets had started to notice this before this latest crash. Bond price and stock price have both tanked. To stay in existence Tesla will have to borrow something in the neighborhood of $1.5 billion later this year and it will all have to be borrowed at high "Junk Bond" rates. Going to be very expensive. Some financial writers are now projecting Tesla's demise by year end.

Dave
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The second part of your comment is accurate, the first not quite. The Model-S and Model-X are profitable, but Tesla is burning much more cash on R&D and getting the Model-3 to market than they are bringing in. They skipped some steps in the Model-3 development because they thought they knew better and it's come back to bite them.
 
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commando1 said:
Here is the "driver" of the autonomous Uber car... The one that killed the pedestrian.

picsart_04-02-09-36-34-jpg.jpg


On her smartphone catching up on Facebook.
Only a moron would believe this is workable.
Politicians are getting bought off big time.
Click to expand...

That's the problem with hot chicks, they just live in their own little world.
 
Mike66Chryslers said:
The second part of your comment is accurate, the first not quite. The Model-S and Model-X are profitable, but Tesla is burning much more cash on R&D and getting the Model-3 to market than they are bringing in. They skipped some steps in the Model-3 development because they thought they knew better and it's come back to bite them.
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They have also big problems with their replacement parts network. It can take months to get a replacement item for a vehicle that has stopped operating. There is a local BMW/Cadillac dealer here who has techs trained to fix Tesla's. They have 8-10 of them sitting on the lot waiting for parts at any given time. Usually takes 4-6 weeks for common replacement parts, longer for less common parts. Not exactly the way you build customer loyalty on a high end car.

Dave
 
Mike66Chryslers said:
The second part of your comment is accurate, the first not quite. The Model-S and Model-X are profitable, but Tesla is burning much more cash on R&D and getting the Model-3 to market than they are bringing in. They skipped some steps in the Model-3 development because they thought they knew better and it's come back to bite them.
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The report I read had everything grouped together to show an aggregate loss per unit. Do you know if the S and X models are profitable without the government incentives to produce "green" cars? That is the real fly in the ointment down the road because it is becoming less likely in the current political climate that such subsidies will be continued.

Dave
 
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