Elon Musk is Going to Get (More) People Killed
New plans for Tesla’s Full Self-Driving is full of red flags
On Monday, Tesla held an invitation-only event for investors which it dubbed “Autonomy Day,” as Elon Musk chose to focus on the future of the vehicles’ Full Self-Driving capabilities. However, while those within Musk’s reality distortion field may have walked away enthused, any serious investor should be terrified about the liability Tesla is continuing to take on as Musk misleads customers about Autopilot’s autonomous capabilities.
Musk, who has a long history of missing his autonomous-driving timelines, now claims Tesla vehicles will be able to drive themselves as soon as the end of the year, and that by the middle of 2020, drivers won’t have to pay any attention to the road. The fact that Musk is setting this expectation is deeply worrying because he doesn’t have the tech to make it happen.
During the event, Musk said Tesla had a new chip under development which was “the best chip in the world” and boldly claimed that autonomous vehicles don’t need LIDAR sensors: “LIDAR is a fool’s errand, and anyone who relies on LIDAR is doomed.”
Yet it’s hard to trust Musk’s boasts when Tesla is the only company working on autonomous vehicles that isn’t using LIDAR, and there’s good reason to believe it has more to do with financials than what’s technically necessary. The Full Self-Driving package is sold for $5,000, or $7,000 after purchase, and LIDAR would make it prohibitively expensive. Despite Musk’s claims, LIDAR fills a blind spot the other sensors cannot, as explained by Argo AI’s Bryan Salesky:
We use LiDAR sensors, which work well in poor lighting conditions, to grab the three-dimensional geometry of the world around the car, but LiDAR doesn’t provide color or texture, so we use cameras for that. Yet cameras are challenged in poor lighting, and tend to struggle to provide enough focus and resolution at all desired ranges of operation. In contrast, radar, while relatively low resolution, is able to directly detect the velocity of road users even at long distances.
Musk further claimed that Tesla vehicles would have level 5 autonomy, which essentially means they would be able to handle any possible driving situation with no geofencing. Such a claim is beyond dishonest. Waymo, the industry leader, is only piloting level 4 vehicles which can handle most situations in limited genfenced areas, and its CEO admitted that level 5 autonomy will basically never happen. More recently, a Volkswagen executive said that level 5 will “never happen globally,” citing a range of necessary factors that will only be realistically achievable in a small number of cities, and Ford’s CEO similarly admitted they “overestimated the arrival of autonomous vehicles.”
But Elon Musk, chief snake oil salesman of the tech industry, expects us to believe Tesla is bucking the trend after failing to meet his previous self-imposed timelines. I’m not falling for it.
Autopilot already has the highest bodycount in part because Musk misleads customers about what it can actually do, and now we face the risk of that getting even worse. Navigant Research’s 2019 ranking of the autonomous vehicle industry showed that Tesla has barely budged from last year — it’s still a laggard — but that doesn’t stop Musk from making dangerously bold claims.
Autopilot is an unproven technology. At present, it’s little more than a driver assist tool even though Musk misleadingly calls it self-driving or autonomous — it’s not. Musk previously claimed that Autosteer, one of the elements of Autopilot, was 40 percent safer after a report by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. However, the agency backed off the claim and an independent review of the data showed that “after Autosteer was installed, Teslas were involved in 60% more crashes.”
Tesla should not be allowed to beta test its technology on public roads, putting other drivers who have not bought into his fantasies at risk. Tesla customers are being mislead about the technology’s capabilities and how safe it is, and Monday’s announcements suggest it could get even more dangerous: Musk wants to allow users to select aggressive modes which will allow a “slight chance of a fender bender.” I really hope states ban any such mode until Musk has independently verified data to prove it’s safe.
Ultimately, I find it very hard to believe that Tesla has made a breakthrough that Waymo has not — this just sounds like more bluster from a man who thrives on exaggeration. If Musk lets customers use these features without proving they’re safe, he could put them and other drivers at physical risk, and investors at financial risk; Musk acknowledged the company could be liable if a self-driving Tesla gets in an accident. And if things continue as they’re going, we all know that’s bound to happen.
