Behold... the new Tesla Convertible! 10

[BridgeSmith]

It self drove. Just directly into a truck trailer.

I could do that with cruise control; what does that prove?

Since presumably you haven't, it proves you're smarter than Autopilot.

 

[IRstuff]

Exactly, but it also proves it's not "self-driving" by any stretch of the imagination and it proves that it's not much more than fancy cruise control with marginally useful lane-keeping.

As for those lawsuits, none of them address possible false statements made by Tesla or its salespeople; so they are likely doomed to fail, since they are concentrating on the mechanical and functional aspects of Autopilot

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

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[BridgeSmith]

"...it also proves it's not "self-driving" by any stretch of the imagination..."

I wasn't arguing that. Obviously, it's not capable of that, but it was marketed as though it was.

"...it's not much more than fancy cruise control with marginally useful lane-keeping."

I agree, except for the "marginally useful" part. I would say "dangerously deceptive".

 

[Spartan5]

IRstuff: The very first link says that the premise of the suit is "to prove that the company is misleading customers about the safety and sophistication of its Autopilot feature."

Aside from what's in the article and sort of seeing the actual lawsuits, what they do or don't address is pure supposition.

 

[BrianPetersen]

What they say in writing "require active driver supervision" and "hardware for full self-driving" and all the fine-print disclaimers, including the one the user interface comes up with and that you have to acknowledge the first time you try to use Autopilot, might save their bacon legally, but that doesn't make it right.

 

[BridgeSmith]

Just like with the FIU pedestrian bridge collapse, the damage to the company's reputation and the public's loss of confidence in the company, will be far more costly than the lawsuits or settlements.

 

[BrianPetersen]

I dunno. Tesla has a lot of fanbois who will defend the company to the end and make excuses for the public malfunctions of Autopilot. There are also a lot of people who won't buy their products until they change their ways of doing business. Neither of those groups seems affected by this.

Tesla isn't going to back off Autopilot functionality unless a regulatory agency tells them to. The government seems to have bought into the concept of self-driving cars and seemingly has given several companies a free pass for their development, so I don't see that happening.

 

[3DDave]

HotRod10 - It seems like a significant ignorance of ENG 20x level analysis on the part of the FIU bridge designers led to its collapse. I can see where that would leave significant concerns. Not starting with a hand-drawn free-body diagram and roughing the loads and stresses to check the computer models is pretty concerning. Such a simple double-check.

In contrast, Tesla Autopilot seems to do exactly what I'd expect it to do with experienced drivers pushing the limits as the primary crash initiator. I think most potential customers look at them and decide that they aren't going to do that; so far the incidents are relatively rare, particularly with the self-selecting nature of Tesla customers.