Quite a hill you are choosing to die on

http://money.cnn.com/2016/07/12/tech...ilot-accident/

There is a big disconnect between "This technology shouldn't been released because it has problems and is worse than the average driver" and "This technology is the best in the world". Both are obviously true, but many people ITT have trouble grasping both ideas at the same time.

I'm also unable to get fatality rates for divided highways in the US. I would assume these are significantly lower than undivided highways, but it is really tough to tell how much better/worse Tesla is than a human without comparable stats.

Looks like the Model X are demand limited as well. Even with their tiny production levels, they're now cutting the entry level Model X price by $9K (with less range).

This is not what you do when you're "supply limited" and have lots of demand, folks.

What's the big deal? Tesla customers have driven over 100 million miles with Autopilot active and reported crashes are single-digit, sounds like awesome numbers to me.

One problem is the kind of crashes. No healthy, fully attentive, non-suicidal person would intentionally drive under the side of a truck. Or if you look at TS' video in post #1076, no carefully driving human would ignore that standing van.

News flash : not all humans are careful drivers. I was driving next to a lady the other day who was texting in stop and go traffic on the highway. At one point she just accelerated right into the car in front of her, doubt the auto pilot would do that.



Nissan launching their own version called ProPilot in some of their mini vans to be used in highway driving conditions. Some scary(hilarious?) verbiage in this fortune article.

http://fortune.com/2016/07/13/nissan...mous-propilot/

"The big difference is that Nissan’s system requires more interaction by the driver. When the ProPilot system automatically applies the brakes, it brings the vehicle to a full stop. At that point, the vehicle will remain in place even if the driver’s foot is off the brake pedal."

Sounds great for highway driving scenarios

"When ready to resume driving, the driver activates the system by touching the switch again or by lightly pressing the accelerator. The system also requires the driver to keep a hand on the wheel, unlike Tesla Autopilot. Nissan’s system will actually deactivate if the drivers remove their hands for more than a few seconds."

Hopefully it doesn't deactivate until the driver regains control

Why does it matter? Yes it fails where humans doesn't, but overall it seems to outperform humans by far. And it's in beta!

Did you read what I wrote? That's why I said healthy and fully attentive. If the someone's texting and he's driving off a cliff it's fully their own fault. Most people are aware of the risks of careless driving and they decide to either live with them or drive more carefully.
But I guess people aren't really aware of the risks of Tesla's autopilot.

I guess when you're the person fully relying on the autopilot of your car and getting beheaded by the chassis of a truck it kind of matters to you. Or at least to the people you leave behind.
It's just a new aspect of car crashes, when you give the choice between life and death over to a computer program. Normally you would say the driver's responsible for careless driving, dui or the car wasn't in a good shape or the street was wet, frozen whatever. It's just totally different from that.
I guess Tesla wasn't very good in communicating that their driving assistance called 'autopilot' wasn't that good for falling asleep at the wheel/being careless.

From last meeting:
From the unofficial tracker it still seems like demand is strong:
https://modelxtracker.com/
Still at some point they should start being demand limited. I assume very few people expected them to sell 500k+ cars/year of MS/MX? 100k cars per year is plenty at the price.

See, this is what I don't understand (from your quote):

In the above, they claim backlog + current order rates is sufficient to meet demand through the end of the year.

So why drop the price $9K on cars sold now? All you do, if the bolded is true, is to increase the wait times significantly and lose more money per car than you already are, in a business that already has an insane cash burn.

It's not like a $9K price drop won't move cars in six months time, should they run into actual surplus supply once the backlog is cleared. You could drop nearly any premium car $9K (BMW, Mercedes) and generate a flurry of orders in a matter of days.

What they're doing makes no sense at all unless supply > demand in the near future. I don't buy the "range as a service" idea. They're losing $9K a car they don't have to lose (if they're not demand limited), so they can introduce the option to buy a tiny bit more range as a service?

Anyway, discussion is boring. Perhaps Musk has some super secret plan I just can't comprehend.

We have had this discussion before. Neither you nor me are working for the marketing department at Tesla, just because we don't know the answer to this question does not imply that there is no rational explanation for it.

They don't lose money on sold cars, the gross margin is ~23%.

Increasing wait times implies that they will be able to keep up that high rate of production for longer, which they might need if are gonna produce >2400cars/week.


It's not a price drop, it's a different car. The old car has the same price. Range and acceleration differs.

We don't know this. Maybe these people would buy a different car if the 60kWh option was not there, maybe Tesla will increase the number of sales over time by doing this. The world is not linear.

I agree, we have had it before. Just restating the previous arguments without answering the previous counter arguments will not convince us.

Which means that A/P + driver watching the road (as instructed) is already safer than driver alone. Elon pointed out on twitter that there was a model S whose owner fell asleep the other week and veered off the road and killed a cyclist. Had A/P been turned on the cyclist would likely still be alive.

Tesla gets deposits. More orders = more cash.

More orders = longer waiting lists

Longer waiting lists = more free moneyz in cancelled orders and interests

heltok,

Could you elaborate on what the rational explanation for cutting the price on something that is sold out. Because the rational explanation is that there isn't strong demand which is bolstered by their comical reporting. (We've covered this. You seem to pretend their lack of transparency and being literally the only car company to report in this absurd fashion is trivial.)


All,

Also, there is no evidence that AutoPilot is far superior to a human. Lets stop making things up and stick to facts.

Mihkel,

they are running an experiment. They want to offer range as a service and thus offer the 60 kwh option with the possibility to upgrade.

Tesla Autopilot cleared in Europe:
http://www.spiegel.de/auto/aktuell/t...a-1103074.html

Source is German but whatever.

I cite myself:

There are plenty of evidence already depending on how you define superior. Lets stop making up claims and stick to facts. Here is one evidence:

I'm not sure how that is remotely relevant.

Stays right in the middle of the lane. Safe as ****

Looks like AP wasn't engaged in Penn fatal crash.

Elon Musk ‏@elonmusk 2h2 hours ago
Onboard vehicle logs show Autopilot was turned off in Pennsylvania crash. Moreover, crash would not have occurred if it was on.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/753699861636128768

It is superior to human at driving in the center of the road. You said there was no evidence of it being superior. I assume you meant to specify how you define superior, but since you didn't it is incorrect to generalize like you did.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/753699861636128768

heltok,

After years of pedantic nitting, sometimes it is refreshing to have someone do the exact same thing to you.

I concede you are correct about an inane and pointless measure of "superiority" that is unrelated to safety.

You really think veering within lanes is unrelated to safety? Does anyone in this thread know how to concede anything?

Veering in your lane is not a huge issue typically, but it has a bit of an effect on driving safely. It is certainly related to safety. You erode your own credibility when you take this hyper-defensive adolescent line.