Autopilot Supplier Ends Relationship With Tesla Over Safety Concerns

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When the people behind Autopilot end their relationship with you over safety concerns, you know something is wrong. How does Tesla spin statements like the ones made by these guys? It's not like they can say "those guys don't know what they are talking about." :eek:

Mobileye broke ties with Tesla Motors because the Silicon Valley firm was “pushing the envelope in terms of safety” with the design of its Autopilot driver-assistance system, Mobileye’s chairman said on Wednesday. "It is not designed to cover all possible crash situations in a safe manner," Amnon Shashua, who is also chief technology officer at the Israel-based maker of collision detection and driver assistance systems, told Reuters. “No matter how you spin it, (Autopilot) is not designed for that. It is a driver assistance system and not a driverless system,” he said in an interview.
 
1) CYA efforts - probably based on legal advice
2) Tesla made a mistake calling it autopilot. Its not an autopilot.

But by the definition of autopilot from the FAA it IS autopilot, people are just fucking retarded. You can find the definition posted in my post history I'm not going to waste more time trying to explain this.
 
1) CYA efforts - probably based on legal advice
2) Tesla made a mistake calling it autopilot. Its not an autopilot.

By definition, it is an autopilot.

An autopilot doesn't mean you can be asleep at the wheel. Pilots in planes who use the autopilot are still required by law to pay attention and maintain control of the flight deck and most airlines prohibit their pilots from doing any non-worked related activities while flying the plane, even if it is on autopilot. A car is no different in this regard; the autopilot is there to help you, not replace you..
 
I bets it is a fun time over there at tesla. Something funny just came to mind. Elon kind of reminds me of Kanye.
 
1) CYA efforts - probably based on legal advice

I think you are absolutely right. The company said this:

“Long term this is going to hurt the interests of the company and hurt the interests of an entire industry, if a company of our reputation will continue to be associated with this type of pushing the envelope in terms of safety,” he said.
 
Trouble in pair a dice.
Tesla should never have called it Auto-Pilot. This is going to bite them in the ass big time.
 
Pretty stupid idea on their part.... They will never be able to get this level of testing for their product, and they can blame tesla/the stupid drivers if anything goes wrong... It's not their fault stupid people can't follow instructions and are misusing the product, that happens in pretty much any industry...
 
1) CYA efforts - probably based on legal advice
2) Tesla made a mistake calling it autopilot. Its not an autopilot.


True and true.

Autopilot was a poor choice in brand name. It has never been more than a driver assist device. Technically speaking there is nothing wrong with the brand name. There are lots of brand names that don't live up to their literal meanings. (Everlast won't literally last forever. Airbus is not literally a bus that flies, etc. etc.) but they should have know that people are stupid and would take it as such.
 
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True and true.

Autopilot was a poor choice in brand name. It has never been more than a driver assist device. Technically speaking there is nothing wrong with the brand name. There are lots of brand names that don't like up to their literal meanings. (Everlast won't literally last forever. Airbus is not literally a bus that flies, etc. etc.) but they should have know that people are stupid and would take it as such.
Everlast was never a word before Everlast invented it. Autopilot was a pre-existing word with pre-existing popular notions about what it means.
Airbus is not functionally a bus? It's a wheeled vehicle than shuttles a group of people that can also fly. It also wasn't a word prior to their use as a brand name.
 
I'm surprised they can just up and do this unless the contract was up for renew.

And this quote: “Long term this is going to hurt the interests of the company and hurt the interests of an entire industry, if a company of our reputation will continue to be associated with this type of pushing the envelope in terms of safety,” I think this will hurt Mobileye more than it will hurt Tesla. Who wants to purchase equipment from a supplier that can't be trusted?
 
I don't think it's bad for them like that. They probably are hedging bets that Tesla will lose the media battle over autopilot and if that happens it will directly lead to them. And that goes w/o saying that it will be terrible for them. I doubt they are short of contracts being a leader in that space so they can recover w/o Tesla.
 
Without Tesla potentially shielding them from liability, how are they going to be comfortable testing their systems on a large scale? They have admitted the limits of their system and they are uncomfortable with the liability, so any future work done for other makers can safely assume they were comfortable with the liability exposure. When it fails, they will be fucked.
 
Why is this int he news today though? Article says the relationship termination was announced back in July?
 
Autopilot is a very accurate name for it. However, it is too bad most people don't know what autopilot does on an air plane.
 
Autopilot is a very accurate name for it. However, it is too bad most people don't know what autopilot does on an air plane.
Which is a problem for those who reused the name for cars.

But then AutoPilot may be, at least until recently with the most modern and capable systems on planes, a poor name to have used in aviation.
 
IMO the real issue is the marketing and management at Tesla. Both marketing and management drive "schedules" and start beating the street early to sell their wares. This bites them in the ass regularly and it's always engineering that takes this hit. I commend Mobileye for pushing back against that marketing and management. I wish more engineers at game dev companies would push back on marketing and management like this.

Sorry to rant a little but the suits fuck it up at my company all the time and its always engineering that they yell at.
 
The problem was never the name, it was the user not using it properly even when knowing they still have to actually be paying attention to the road.
 
1) CYA efforts - probably based on legal advice
2) Tesla made a mistake calling it autopilot. Its not an autopilot.

CYA, maybe.

I suppose you have to make adjustments when your client base of customers are middle class and up and normally all have the resources to bring potentially damaging lawsuits to bare.
 
I'm surprised they can just up and do this unless the contract was up for renew.

And this quote: “Long term this is going to hurt the interests of the company and hurt the interests of an entire industry, if a company of our reputation will continue to be associated with this type of pushing the envelope in terms of safety,” I think this will hurt Mobileye more than it will hurt Tesla. Who wants to purchase equipment from a supplier that can't be trusted?


Agreed. Either their product does what Mobileye says it does, and Tesla promotes and supports proper safety guidance for the product, or there is a failing somewhere. And from what I have seen and heard, Tesla isn't deficient in it's warnings and instructions to it's customers so that leaves it all in Mobileye's lane. Maybe Mobileye's product is deficient and doesn't meet their claimed capabilities and they are pulling away to get out of the spotlight and gain time to both hide evidence of the weaknesses and correct them for the future.

Tesla is still in a precarious position because no matter what, a failing in Mobileye's product will still hurt Tesla. Maybe letting Mobileye bow out gracefully will make it hard enough to pin the tail on the donkey and give both companies time to pull things together.
 
Liability lawsuits tend to cast a wide net in hope of convincing a jury that deep pockets company #3 should have known better and should be on the hook for the 6 kids that died a horrible burning death when the evil car on autopilot slammed into the side of the minivan. No matter how many TOS Tesla puts between the owner and Autopilot, the minivan driver did NOT agree to them. Fighting such a lawsuit could easily cost more then the entire profit from sales of the sensor gizmos.
 
This article sounds like complete BS to me. No for-profit company is going to refuse the chance to break into a potentially huge emerging market because of a single customer mishap.

I suspect it's a "you can't fire me; I quit" scenario. They probably couldn't meet Tesla's requirements, and were losing the business anyway.
 
I was lead to believe by Youtube that Tesla has the most modern driver assist system on market.
No matter how Tesla announces this system properly, truth is they are generating a huge amount of press exposure as a self driving electric car company. nearly every vidoe review of the new Tesla models has the driver running around without hands on wheel, some videos show the reviewer not looking to the street.

As Youtube is a great marketing force, and most if not all of these videos are monetized, and Tesla is not putting them down for false information, i can understand how the provider of the best driver assist system want to get away from their most famous costumer.
 
This article sounds like complete BS to me. No for-profit company is going to refuse the chance to break into a potentially huge emerging market because of a single customer mishap.

I suspect it's a "you can't fire me; I quit" scenario. They probably couldn't meet Tesla's requirements, and were losing the business anyway.
MobileEye is already used by many of the major car companies. In North America alone, there will probably be hundreds of thousands of new MobileEye systems sold in Honda Civics, Accords, CRVs and Pilots this year alone.
 
MobileEye is already used by many of the major car companies. In North America alone, there will probably be hundreds of thousands of new MobileEye systems sold in Honda Civics, Accords, CRVs and Pilots this year alone.

Then you know which cars to avoid, then, don't you? Telsa doesn't make these systems, they don't decide their capabilities. that's fed to them by the company that DOES make the system. then they market it, and they've put as many warnings and clarifications as possible without out right removing it. Ultimately, the hammer will come down on them, even if it hits Tesla first, Telsa will return to burn them down, either way, they are taking this hit, as they very well should. For the record, i hate the very concept of these systems to begin with.
 
This article sounds like complete BS to me. No for-profit company is going to refuse the chance to break into a potentially huge emerging market because of a single customer mishap.

I suspect it's a "you can't fire me; I quit" scenario. They probably couldn't meet Tesla's requirements, and were losing the business anyway.

Easily possible. If you happen to be the CEO of an emerging tech company like Mobileye and something is going wrong, and your biggest most market recognizable customer is about to dump you, how do you keep all the blame from falling on your own head?
 
I was lead to believe by Youtube that Tesla has the most modern driver assist system on market.
No matter how Tesla announces this system properly, truth is they are generating a huge amount of press exposure as a self driving electric car company. nearly every vidoe review of the new Tesla models has the driver running around without hands on wheel, some videos show the reviewer not looking to the street.

As Youtube is a great marketing force, and most if not all of these videos are monetized, and Tesla is not putting them down for false information, i can understand how the provider of the best driver assist system want to get away from their most famous costumer.

No, not if everything is all happy in Mobileye land. No you don't dump a name like Tesla for such a thing. Particularly when it's only a couple of cases so far and it's so obvious that the real problem lies between the ears of a small subset of idiots. No, if there is no real problem with the product and the occurrences are rare then you keep your game up, your legal staff strong, and your spin doctors working overtime until the stats and the investigations properly support your game.

Best I can tell, there have been two fatalities, one in the US and one in China.

This article explains the sort of cautions and warnings a Tesla owner can experience.
Tesla says autopilot involved in second car crash - BBC News

.................
"This is contrary to the terms of use that are agreed to when enabling the feature and the notification presented in the instrument cluster each time it is activated.

"As road conditions became increasingly uncertain, the vehicle again alerted the driver to put his hands on the wheel.

"He did not do so, and shortly thereafter the vehicle collided with a post on the edge of the roadway.

"We specifically advise against its use at high speeds on undivided roads."

It said the man - who had identified himself only as Pang - had told a police officer the alerts given by the car had been in English but he spoke Mandarin.

Language change | Tesla Motors
For anyone else interested, I checked with tesla and they can load additional languages if you ask them before delivery of your car.....sweet!!

Is it possible to change the UI language?
Sorry to reply to my own thread but the response from EdA doesn't really answer the question (no offence intended) and I've now done my trip in the Model S rented in Austria.

So I can confirm that it is possible to change the UI language. You just go into the Controls, and there is a setting in there. When you change the language, the centre screen will reboot, and then everything on the screen will be in your chosen language and so will the navigation voice.

This guy who says he speaks Mandarin and not English crashed in July, this blog post saying you can change the language in the car's settings was in August. It is possible that it's a new feature, but it looks like he could have had the dealer do it upon delivery previously.

I am glad this guy didn't get killed though.
 
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Didn't Tesla already announce that they're dumping Mobileye’s equipment for future models. I seem to remember reading that somewhere a few weeks ago.
 
This article sounds like complete BS to me. No for-profit company is going to refuse the chance to break into a potentially huge emerging market because of a single customer mishap.

I suspect it's a "you can't fire me; I quit" scenario. They probably couldn't meet Tesla's requirements, and were losing the business anyway.

Oh, will you look at that:
Tesla: Mobileye tried to stop our in-house chip development

"When Tesla refused to cancel its own vision development activities and plans for deployment, Mobileye discontinued hardware support for future platforms and released public statements implying that this discontinuance was motivated by safety concerns."
 
Autopilot is a very accurate name for it. However, it is too bad most people don't know what autopilot does on an air plane.
It doesn't really matter what "Auto-Pilot" on a plane means. It's what the public perception of what it means. As an example, the word Flammable has supplanted inflammable because people thought it meant it wouldn't burn.
 
It doesn't really matter what "Auto-Pilot" on a plane means. It's what the public perception of what it means. As an example, the word Flammable has supplanted inflammable because people thought it meant it wouldn't burn.
that's insane. or is it sane? whatever...
 
Then you know which cars to avoid, then, don't you? Telsa doesn't make these systems, they don't decide their capabilities. that's fed to them by the company that DOES make the system. then they market it, and they've put as many warnings and clarifications as possible without out right removing it. Ultimately, the hammer will come down on them, even if it hits Tesla first, Telsa will return to burn them down, either way, they are taking this hit, as they very well should. For the record, i hate the very concept of these systems to begin with.


None of the other manufacturers that use Mobile Eye implement it in such a fashion that it can drive the car by it's self, Honda, Toyota, GM, Ford, Subaru, etc. all require the DRIVER to maintain control of the car at all times. This is where Tesla screwed up.... Their system is 100% autonomous when you enable it....
 
None of the other manufacturers that use Mobile Eye implement it in such a fashion that it can drive the car by it's self, Honda, Toyota, GM, Ford, Subaru, etc. all require the DRIVER to maintain control of the car at all times. This is where Tesla screwed up.... Their system is 100% autonomous when you enable it....

Oh I see so basically i have to do what I was already doing before so the feature is thus pointless and a waste of money and my time? Got it, I'll keep that in mind as I'm pretty sure i do not wish to pay to do something I'm already doing now.
 
Oh I see so basically i have to do what I was already doing before so the feature is thus pointless and a waste of money and my time? Got it, I'll keep that in mind as I'm pretty sure i do not wish to pay to do something I'm already doing now.

dude, did you actually read what I said? your reply indicates that you are not sure what I said.
 
dude, did you actually read what I said? your reply indicates that you are not sure what I said.

Yes you said they don't have enough confidence that I can relax anymore than I already am while fully in control of my car with zero assistance. As such they are bloatware and a waste of my time and money that is better spent....well....anywhere else really. I understood what you said fully, I'm not sure you understand the notion I've presented, however.

i will however point out that this brand new Honda crossover right here can and does most certainly drive itself and with definitively less confidence than what Telsa's does. Hands off the wheel, read a book damn near, just fine. Wouldn't do that, don't even want the tech, hence it's not my car, but it certainly can and does. So.....not entirely sure what your whole point was again.
 
but they should have known that people are stupid and would take it as such.
^this, in spades.

Never underestimate the stupidity of the public. They're much more stupid than you know. Don't think so? Look at all the idiotic videos that people watch by the millions. How many people do you know that are fascinated with the latest cat video?
 
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