Hands-free, eyes-off-the-traffic driving is now available in Mercedes Benz cars.
At speeds up to 40 mph, the driver can look away from the road at something else, like social media or news videos. The system has limitations: it can only be used on freeways that have been mapped by Mercedes, using centimeter-precise GPS positioning that even accounts for continental drift. It can’t be used in construction zones.
But Mercedes’ Drive Pilot is the first SAE Level 3 system for conditionally automated driving that has been approved for sale in Europe and the US.
SAE Safety Levels go from Level 0 (no driving automation) to Level 5 (full driving automation). Here is the range of SAE-defined driver freedom:
As you can see, with Level 3 the car may request the driver to take over in some circumstances.
Level 4 will not request a take-over, but there are conditions in which auto-driving may not be advised. Level 5 handles all conditions, and drivers are optional.
Drive Pilot is offered on the electric EQS fastback and gas-powered S-Class sedan. Two states, California and Nevada, have approved the system, and some 100,000 miles have been mapped in California.
The technology uses a raft of sensors: lidar (light-based range finding), 3D image capture, long-range radar sensors for speed and distance, ultrasonic units that sense the car’s surroundings, and even a moisture sensor for road conditions.
To allow the (former) drivers to take advantage of the new leisure brought about by that power, the car providers them with a set of online games and Zoom call features.
Mercedes is so confident in their system that they take on full liability when DrivePilot is being used.
The Drive Pilot hardware is a no-cost option.
Mercedes is also the first company to get approval for a Level 4 system with its Automated Valet Parking service,
The company’s goal is to give drivers “the greatest luxury of all: time.”
Tesla, a pioneer in this field, has hands-free system “Full Self Drive” (FSD) system that is rated as a Level 2 device, and requires the driver to be in full control at all times.
Musk has been in China recently, trying to win approval for the use of Tesla’s self-driving technology. Tesla cars rely mostly on visual information from their cameras to supply data to the driving-assistance features.
Musk personally pushed back on the use of radar or proximity signals – a delay that cost Tesla the crown for automated driving. A report in The Washington Post says that Musk: “overruled his engineers. In May 2021 Tesla announced it was eliminating radar on new cars. Soon after, the company began disabling radar in cars already on the road. The result, according to interviews with nearly a dozen former employees and test drivers, safety officials and other experts, was an uptick in crashes…”
“Even with radar, Teslas were less sophisticated than the lidar and radar-equipped cars of competitors.”
The problem with camera-only systems is that the car computer must “decide” what is in front of the vehicle, based on visual information. In bad weather conditions or when approaching bright lights, this is dicey. Musk tried to give the AI system a rich data resource for the task, by sending out the Full Self-Driving feature to 360,000 owners — who paid up to $15,000 to be eligible for it — let them activate it at their own discretion; and collect the resulting data.
This kind of field test using customers as probes, was responsible for many crashes (see below).
Tesla has now re-installed radar.
In a shortage of staff expertise, Musk pulled dozens of engineers out of Tesla to work with code at Twitter. Staff started to burn out. Andrej Karpathy, Tesla’s director of artificial intelligence, left to join OpenAI.
In the meantime, other auto companies continued their work on their own self-drive systems. Earlier this month, Huawei Technologies launched a rival camera-based autopilot technology which its said was more powerful than Tesla’s most advanced autopilot system.
The situation for Tesla in China is a flip from the American controversy over TikTok, where there is big concern that data from TikTok will be used by Chinese agencies. The Chinese are holding back on approval of Musk’s auto-pilot because of fears of data sharing. China has already banned Tesla cars from entering military sites, airports and train stations.
Tesla is pushing for Chinese approval because it considers self-driving as a key growth engine of the EV industry. Musk postponed a trip to see India’s Prime Minister Modi in order to press the Chinese to expand FSD permissions.
This chart from Navigant Consulting provides an aerial view of the progress being made by the various car companies:
Tesla was once the premier EV maker in China, but has slipped against the Chinese company BYD (“Build Your Dreams”). Tesla sales have dropped overall in China, at a time when that market grew by more than 15%.
Musk was able to confirm that Chinese web mapping data from Baidu – which Tesla has been using since 2020 - will now include its lane-level navigation system. But this does not clear Tesla to introduce driverless cars in China.
And Beijing does not gain any strategic value from giving Tesla the go-ahead for driverless cars, as there are many Chinese companies with more advanced systems,
Tesla is not even showing cars at the world’s largest EV show in Beijing; its Cybertruck is not street-legal there and its other models are suffering from design fatigue.
New BYD models unveiled at the Beijing Auto Show.
Tesla’s cars are essentially unchanged since 2013. That conservative approach was good for buyers at that time, who were already taking a chance with the new technology. Now, however, Tesla is being left behind by more dynamic designs from BYD, Hundai, Kia, Renault and of course Mercedes.
Then there is the design of the Cybertruck…
Musk has also made manufacturing errors. Back in 2012 for example he sourced over-sized screens and electronics that were not intended for cars for the Model S. The screens failed, prompting recalls and investigations.
But the key piece of bad news concerns the auto-pilot itself; the software does a poor job at keeping drivers engaged.
Sequence showing a Tesla unable to recognize the flashing lights of an emergency vehicle and then hitting the vehicle; until that moment in the trip, the car had asked the driver 150 times to make adjustments to the steering.
That may be a harsh judgement, because when a Tesla system senses that it needs driver help, the car chimes, turns on its hazard lights, comes to a stop, and waits. It does not leave the lane of traffic, and the Tesla manuals make this clear. It is up to the driver to re-engage and maneuver the car. Even Level 3 systems do this, by law. Leaving the lane is considered more risky than just stopping in the lane. This may or may not be the right policy, but it is not Tesla’s fault. People are not always able to keep alert when the car has been doing much of the driving.
Only 13.4% of U.S. adults have a favorable view of Tesla compared to 28.4% in January 2022. At that time, companies like BMW, Ford, Toyota, Kia, and Subaru enjoyed a 60% loyalty rate. Fast Company reports on a forecast by S&P Global Mobility saying that Tesla’s U.S. EV market share will continue to drop until it reaches 20% by 2025.
The view may be influenced by factors in addition to car design and performance…corporate reputation is taking a hit. Musk took $17-million in federal Charging Grants just before firing his entire 500-person Supercharger team. The Supercharger team was responsible for Tesla’s network of public charging stations, which is becoming an industry standard.
It may be hard for Tesla to steer its corporate vehicle back onto the road. Top executives have just left: longtime vice president of investor relations Martin Viecha, senior vice president Drew Baglino, and Rohan Patel, the company’s vice president of public policy and business development walked out last week. Daniel Ho, head of new products, and Rebecca Tinucci, senior director of the previously-mentioned Supercharger group, were also let go. Allie Arebalo, the company’s chief HR executive, has also left the company. When the person in charge of the entire workforce is made redundant, the company is admitting gross staffing error.
Musk is making even more job cuts, in the style of his days at X/Twitter when he slashed entire teams. In fact, he fired 90% of Twitter’s staff. He demanded that all departments go ‘absolutely hard core’ with staff cuts. He gave no evident thought to what people were doing or what was needed for the platform to develop.
Coincidently, X/Twitter has also lost 90% of its value; today it is estimated to be worth $4-billion, from a purchase price of $44-billion.
Musk just came out with this statement of his staffing plans for Tesla:
"While some on exec staff are taking this seriously, most are not yet doing so. Starting at 10 AM EST on Tuesday, I will ask for the resignation of any executive who retains more than three people who don't obviously pass the excellent, necessary and trustworthy test... I have been super clear about this."
Bloomberg News has previously reported Musk has pushed for a 20 per cent reduction in Tesla’s workforce.
The exits may have affected some Tesla investors; overall Tesla stocks fell slightly, after gaining some ground following the news of Musk’s activities in China.
These staff investments pale in comparison to a salary squabble involving Musk himself, who went to court to obtain $56-billion in compensation that he felt he was owed. The courts have struck him down thus far. For context, Tesla’s gross revenues since its founding are $338-billion. Total gross profits are $73-billion. Net income is $27-billion. Musk is thus requesting 16% of all revenues since 2009, 72% of gross profits, and 195% of net income.
His grip on reality is right up there with his buddy Donald Trump.
Interestingly, a sector in which they both have investments shows a similar disastrous outcome. The value of Musk’s ownership of X/Twitter has nose-dived since he bought it, and the value of Trump’s Truth Social network has dropped by 65%.
These gentlemen were once heralded as exemplary communicators. This was their strong suit.
Now one is watching Mercedes pass him, and the other is on a path to jail.
A commonality is that they both like Putin. Maybe that was enough bad karma to weight both of them down.
Or maybe their reputations were not earned, and they were just ordinary people with inflated egos who got a head start in life because daddy had money.
Time will tell how far they will fall, but neither looks to be making any upwards progress at the moment.
They are on their own Autopilot.
And they don’t seem to be doing very well…
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