adamjcook's comments

There will be significant differences in demands made by the end users of a web browser and a viable CAD system for serious work though.

It is an extremely tough market that many have been shaken out of.

Reliability is a must, particularly on the data representation and exchange front. And those assurances carry ENORMOUS costs. Big money at immediate risk in downstream, physical product if that goes south at any time - spread across multiple manufacturers and other product lifecycle parties.

Lots of workstation compatibility certification work done on CAD kernels.

PLM alone, embedded in many engineering organizations, is a very sticky element for retaining a certain CAD program and certain kernels internally - and it is my understanding that PLM is where the major money is made (not so much on the per seat CAD licensing costs).

New grads are coming out from college today after using CAD company-supplied software in much of their classwork for 4 years.

Many CNC controllers use Parasolid internally for certain visualization and programming operations - machines that will be working on the floor for decades from today.

The fact is that the per seat licensing cost and lock-in tradeoff is simply not a serious issue for many - and such costs have become arguably marginal for even small design houses and manufacturers.

> If you think it's a black box to the Tesla drivers, how is it not a black box to the Waymo customers in the back seat of these cars?

The general public (as a vehicle occupant) only interacts with a Waymo vehicle as a passenger with no vehicle control responsibilities.

That is in stark contrast from the integral human-machine relationship that exists in a Tesla vehicle.

> If you mean to the teams, you cannot assume that Waymo's systems are any less of a black box than Tesla's systems.

True.

Waymo's internal processes are a Black Box to me (and anyone external to Waymo) because we are not read into their systems safety lifecycle, whatever it may be.

Hopefully and presumably, Waymo is maintaining a Safety Management System (SMS) with their test operators and other internal teams, as they have claimed in the past.

Of course, since there is little-to-no regulatory oversight of this in the US (at the moment, perhaps)... Waymo's "word" is really the only thing the public has to go by.

That is not acceptable, in my view, in constructing a novel transportation system that ultimately relies on public trust to be economically viable... but that is the regulatory reality right now.

In the case of Tesla, it is definitive that they are not maintaining a SMS, in large part, because Tesla's (untrained) customers utilizing the system cannot be sufficiently read into a lifecycle. There is simply no way to do that without maintaining a highly-controlled, continuous relationship with the test operator.

For example, the "release notes" (sprinkled with some Tweets from Musk) that Tesla issues with some of the FSD Beta updates are simply too puny relative to the complexity of not only the vehicle system, but the larger complexity of the roadway.

> And even then, they're not much of a black box at all, besides the actual object detection, as both Waymo and Tesla still have most decision-making in regular logic-based code, not machine learning algorithms; and when they do, such as with "do I need to get over now to make the next turn", it's still fed back into the "business logic" that decides what to do and thus logged and audited when it's sent back to HQ.

As I stated elsewhere, these are physical safety-critical systems where the totality of the systems safety components cannot be expressed in software alone.

Remote vehicle telemetry is valuable of course, but as a tool to serve the validation process... not the validation process itself.

Vehicle telemetry cannot be a complete accounting of all of the interacting systems safety components involved here.

For that, like all other safety-critical systems, one needs exhaustive, controlled and physical validation.

Respectfully, no FSD Beta video can add anything of safety value in evaluating these systems - and the only thing that these videos do these days is add a sense of complacency in most or all FSD Beta users.

Videos and personal experiences can only reveal safety issues, never positive progress.

Marques (and every other FSD Beta user) is not read into a would-be systems safety lifecycle for this safety-critical systems that Tesla should be maintaining.

Marques (and every other FSD Beta user) is entirely blind to that.

It is a complete Black Box to them.

Therefore, the assessments made are always subjective and are almost entirely based on emotions and appearances (and other hand-wavy, ill-defined aspects such as "interventions" or "disengagements") rather than a complete accounting of all relevant systems safety components.

Systems safety is about exhaustively asking questions and then exhaustively seeking quantifiable answers to those questions against established failure modes and in the context of the system and every other system that interacts with it (including the human driver in the case of a FSD Beta-equipped vehicle as a Level 2-capable vehicle).

That is the whole point of a company maintaining a robust systems safety lifecycle - to convert subjective opinions of system characteristics into quantifiable understanding.

Tesla is not maintaining that.

Throughout the video, there are several places were Marques states "he thinks" or "he believes" or "that looks good" and such comments are also prevalent in the YouTube comments attached to the video.

These are safety-critical systems where an unhandled failure can readily result in an injury or death.

Responsible systems developers need something far more quantifiable than blind opinions of run-of-the-mill consumers.

That FSD Beta-active vehicles do not appear to "run into things as often" on the roadway is not a complete evaluation of the system.

There are also very real indirect and "unseen" safety components that are inherently part of the public roadways that must also be accounted for.

For what it is worth, I touched on some examples of this recently in a Mastodon thread: https://elk.zone/mastodon.social/@adamjcook/1101629508444173...

> Regulators continue to allow it, and their opinion > internet randos.

This is true.

> When they force FSD to be pulled, then there is weight behind the argument.

Well, I suppose that it is pretty hard to dispute this, but it should be recognized that the NHTSA (the theoretical regulator of vehicle and highway safety in the US) is extremely weak and virtually non-existent.

The NHTSA lacks anything close to the skill sets necessary to independently, proactively and robustly scrutinize even rudimentary mechanical issues (which has been confirmed by several USDOT OIG reports over the years).

With opaque, complex automated systems and software... the NHTSA stands no chance.

The NHTSA lacks the internal skill sets to understand any of the comments that I have made elsewhere on this post.

Again, you are not wrong per se, but again, it should be recognized that the NHTSA is concerned primarily with establishing plausible deniability to protect the agency and with headlines rather than protecting the public with solid regulatory processes and oversight.

(Coincidentally enough, yet another USDOT OIG report was buried in a Friday afternoon release: https://www.autoblog.com/2023/06/02/nhtsa-fails-to-meet-inte.... I kid you not, every four years or so the USDOT OIG releases another critical report on the NHTSA that focused on issues not rectified in the previous report. It is like Groundhog Day.)

> You already share the road with inattentive drivers and drunks, so the risk acceptance benchmark has been set.

This is true.

Because the US public does not demand change and because roadway deaths are high, but distributed across time and space... the NHTSA remains weak and overall US transportation policy remains dreadfully poor.

> FSD is arguably better than both cohorts, considering number of deaths caused.

Unquantifiable.

There is no way to accurately and independently quantify the downstream safety impact of FSD Beta.

Sure, perhaps the NHTSA believes that (because they must given their structural issues), but we should recognize why such assumptions are flawed.

> More people will die in the next few minutes from traffic deaths than have ever been attributed to Tesla’s autopilot or FSD (33 total, as of this comment).

There is the possibility for "indirect" incidents caused by FSD Beta where the FSD Beta-active vehicle is never physically impacted.

We cannot assume that those do not exist.

And we also cannot assume that the media is able to pick up on every Tesla vehicle-related incident - even as well-followed as Tesla, the company, is.

In fact, other than the automaker's word, in many cases, safety investigators like those from the NTSB cannot independently and forensically establish specific root causes.

In my view, the higher-level issues with the FSD Beta program are:

- A failure by Tesla to view the system that they are developing as what it really is - a physical safety-critical system and not "an AI". Those two are distinct systems as, with a physical safety-critical systems, the totality of the systems safety components cannot be fully expressed in software - neither initially nor continuously.

- To build on that point, Tesla is not allowing the Operational Design Domain (ODD) via a robust, well-maintained validation process determine the vehicle hardware as the ODD demands it to be. Instead, Tesla is trying to "front run" it (ignore the demands of the ODD) by largely focusing on hardware costs. The tension from failing to recognize that is why Tesla, in part, has a long history of being forced to (somewhat clandestinely) change the relevant sensor and compute hardware on their vehicles while promising to "solve FSD" (whatever that means) by the end of every year since around 2015 or so.

That "comparison YouTube video" is absurd and dangerous, because, at minimum...

A Level 4-capable vehicle (a Waymo vehicle) is an incomparably different system than a Level 2-capable vehicle (a vehicle equipped with FSD Beta).

The Waymo vehicle has a design intent such that there is no human driver fallback requirement within their vehicle's Operational Design Domain (ODD).

The Tesla vehicle has a de facto design intent such that the human driver is the fallback at all times - which makes the control relationship between the human driver and the automated system exactly the same as if the Tesla vehicle was equipped with no automation at all.

The risk profiles and failure mode analyses are Night and Day different and, therefore, the validation traits between these two vehicle are Night and Day different.

But, more than that, there are no guarantees that:

- The human driver of the FSD Beta-active vehicle shown in that video did not manipulate any of the vehicle controls out-of-view that clandestinely assisted the vehicle without deactivating the automated system (possible and inherent Human Factors safety issues with that aside); and

- The creators of this comparison video did not select the most visually-performant run out of several attempts.

Naturally, since we are dealing with safety-critical systems here, assumptions of "positive safety" are not compatible with any internal or external analysis.

Lastly, I have yet to see a video involving FSD Beta where indirect and "unseen" systems safety issues were satisfied. Appearances can be deceiving and deadly with safety-critical systems.

In my book, Tesla gets a bad rap for providing an unvalidated, should-be safety-critical system to run-of-the-mill consumers without an accompanying Safety Management System.

The fact that they profit handsomely off this structurally dangerous wrongdoing is just the cherry on top.

And, without robustly maintaining a systems safety lifecycle (which, by necessity, must incorporate a Safety Management System)... no technical progress is quantifiable by anyone, including Tesla.

Tesla effectively throws a system over-the-wall and throws it all on the human driver and on the public.

> According to Moravy, vehicle assembly processes haven’t changed in the last 100 years, which he says is “really silly.

Where to start with this article?

Here is a good spot I guess.

First off, Moravy is wrong.

If anyone thinks that auto manufacturing and the "vehicle assembly process" has not substantially changed in the last 100 years, then they are totally ignorant of the industry and of the exacting details associated with something as complex as automotive manufacturing.

The other vital thing that this article fails to mention at all is how manufacturing is shaped by the larger concerns of the product lifecycle - which is (or should be) the actual "product" that leaves the factory.

"The car" is just a hunk of metal that embodies the product lifecycle - which can be competitively unique from manufacturer-to-manufacturer.

One cannot talk myopically about "costs" and whatever happens on the manufacturing floor without bringing in the total concerns of the product lifecycle (i.e. service, end-of-life, market requirements).

That is difficult to do in an article because the total size and complexity of each automaker's product lifecycle is immense (and largely unknown externally from the automaker in question), but it must be done.

> If something goes wrong in final assembly, you block the whole line and you end up with buffering in between.”

Which is how, fundamentally or in part fundamentally, the Toyota Production System works - and it is difficult to argue with the quality results at Toyota.

Honestly, I am not seeing much of a difference here overall.

There are various component assembly lines that do run outside and "in parallel" with the General Assembly lines at incumbent automakers.

I am not even sure how this is debatable.

> “However, there are some quality-related risks involved, such as potential gaps in fit and finish,” warns Pischalnikov. (snip) “The reason that’s always been done is for color consistency, to ensure that there’s a perfect match between the doors and the rest of the car body,” Prasad points out. “By not having to assemble, disassemble and reassemble vehicles, you can reduce production costs and eliminate waste.

Which are quality control aspects that Tesla still seemingly struggles with, near as I can tell.

I am all for encouraging automakers to explore new methods of automotive manufacturing and BEV production will present significant opportunities to do so, but this article from Assembly Magazine is, at the very least, incomplete.

I am tired of Tesla lying about its vehicles being capable of "driving themselves" and selling a "Full Self-Driving" product that is anything but - preying on the public's ignorance and substantially harming public safety.

I am dog tired of that.

No, other automakers are definitely not saints... but Tesla has embraced uniquely extreme wrongdoings throughout its history and this Handelsblatt story (which is still coming out in stages) fits Tesla like a glove.

In some cases, yes, but certainly not in all of them (or a majority of them) here in Detroit (based on photographs taken by urban explorers).

There are many department stores and theaters, for example, that had wide open floors.

Conversions of department stores to residential units is popular in Detroit since we had so many at one time.

The United Artists Theatre high-rise I mentioned has no divided offices from the photos taken by urban explorers: http://www.detroiturbex.com/content/parksandrec/uat/index.ht...

I believe that the Kales Building did not as well.

It is certainly not clear to me that, in many of these Detroit conversations, that just because the space was divided into discrete, smaller spaces that plumbing was run to them.

Not to challenge your comment, but we have been converting office high-rises into apartments all over Detroit seemingly quite successfully and tastefully - with buildings built in the 1920s no less.

I am living in a converted office high-rise (built in 1914) right now in fact: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kales_Building

And there is another in the middle of conversion right next door: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Artists_Theatre_Build...

It is hard to generalize, but I would be willing to bet that it is cheaper to convert more modern, recently built or still under-construction office high-rises.

Hmm. Perhaps I should have read the parent's comment more carefully. I think that I might have misinterpreted it.

You (and the parent comment) are correct.

My comment was not intended to argue that a recall prescribed a particular corrective action.

I agree.

> The OTA updates do provide an avenue to make cars much safer by reducing the friction for these type of safety fixes.

True, but let us also acknowledge the immense systems safety downsides of OTA updates given the lack of effective automotive regulation in the US (and to varying degrees globally).

OTA updates can also be utilized to hide safety-critical system defects that did exist on a fleet for a time.

Also, the availability of OTA update machinery might cause internal validation processes to be watered down (for cost and time-to-market reasons) because there is an understanding that defects can always be fixed relatively seamlessly after the vehicle has been delivered.

These are serious issues and are entirely flying under the radar.

And this is why US automotive regulators need to start robustly scrutinizing internal processes at automakers, instead of arbitrary endpoints.

The US automotive regulatory system largely revolves around an "Honor Code" with automakers - and that is clearly problematic when dealing with opaque, "software-defined" vehicles that leave no physical evidence of a prior defect that may have caused death or injury in some impacted vehicles before an OTA update was pushed to the fleet.

EDIT: Fixed some minor spelling/word selection errors.

It is the terminology that exists in US automotive regulations (what little there effectively are).

A "recall" is just a public record that a safety-related defect existed, the products impacted and what the manufacturer performed in terms of a corrective action.

Additionally, I believe that the possibility exists that Tesla must update the vehicle software at a service center due to configuration issues. Only a small number of vehicles may require that type of corrective action, but the possibility exists.

Historically, there exist product recalls (especially outside of the automotive domain) where the product in question does not have to be returned (replacement parts are shipped to the impacted customers, for example).

No consumer can purchase any vehicle that is capable of "self-driving" or "driving itself" today.

Tesla's vehicles are not capable of self-driving and, at all times, the human driver is driving the vehicle as both Autopilot and FSD Beta are partial automated driving systems that require a human driver fallback at all times.

The attentiveness required of the human driver with a partial automated driving system is equivalent (on a systems-level) to if the vehicle was not equipped with any automated driving system at all.

> I'm not sure why they don't explicitly write in the report that the driver may have been trapped in the back seat, and was unable to locate or use the mechanical release to escape.

Because the NTSB cannot establish that conclusively given the almost total lack of physical evidence remaining after the vehicle fire.

It does not mean that a vehicle defect does not actually exist from the NTSB's point-of-view. It just means that the NTSB lacks the physical evidence to conclude anything there.

(I personally find the necessary "additional steps" required for exiting the vehicle from the rear seats in the event of a power loss troubling.)

More broadly, this NTSB report is being misinterpreted by many here.

The "probable causes" (not "causes") and "lessons learned" (tellingly distinct from the NTSB's more traditional "safety recommendations") established in the final report are exactly tailored to the physical evidence and physical facts that did remain independently of Tesla (the company) - and no more.

The actual title of the HN submission is, in my view, inappropriately written by excluding the word "probable".

My experience is the opposite for what it is worth.

I used to own an ID.4 (which was a great car in my opinion, but I recently moved from Dallas to Detroit and, ironically, was able to go car-free in Detroit).

I made a round trip from Dallas to Denver without any Electrify America charger issues in 2021 (no waiting times either).

I also made a round trip from Dallas to Detroit in September 2022 and I only encountered one (1) slow charger where I had to move my vehicle to the next available charger (I had to wait at an already full charging station for about 30 minutes at one (1) stop also).

I was pretty surprised by both trips in terms of the lack of hassles.

Today, I have zero reservations about driving any EV over long distances.

I was worried on my first Dallas to Denver leg, but after the trip was successful, my charging/range anxiety is gone for good.

Perhaps my experience would be different elsewhere in the US, but for the Midwest, my experience had been good.

Just my two cents…

> No one would live in Detroit because it’s bleak and sprawling. San Francisco is beautiful and cosmopolitan. The trajectory of Detroit is irreversible and structural

As someone who just moved to Detroit (in October of 2022), I could not disagree more.

This city is clearly on the upswing and it is immensely beautiful.

Do not sleep on Detroit.

If anything, it is absurd for this "article" to compare whatever is happening in San Francisco to a completely unrelated population decline event in Detroit that spanned over 70 years.

In other words, I am not sure why Detroit would be brought into this "analysis" at all. That is what is absurd.

The theater part was demolished.

The high-rise building part remains and is being converted into residential units right now.