Bad Vision

I blogged twice on Theranos in 2019. Actually the second post was bringing back the most profound statement by Steve Jobs about the "tremendous amount of craftsmanship between a great idea and a great product". One would think the Bad Blood lesson was sufficient to stop lunatic CEOs from pitching sam stories and lemming investors from following them blindly.

Apparently, not.

In a remarkable public statement last week Tesla published on their FSD system, saying "...there is no guarantee.... (the FSD) ...will perform as expected... (...) ...or at all.". On the other hand they argued the AutoPilot was not engaged in the recent Texas crash and there was a driver at the wheel. At the same time the official Tesla Self-Driving Demonstration video still starts by saying "The person in the driver's seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself.". 

How does it all add up?

If you're interested in the technical details, Guy Hooper posted a very good analysis on Seeking Alpha. He says Tesla had to scrap the old software and has started from scratch. He is still quite optimistic they may make it (albeit with a significant delay). My personal view is less rosy.

As of now no one in the industry continues trying the autonomous vehicle trick based on vision alone. Intel's Mobileye was the last to abandon this concept back in 2019, and now their approach is to have three independent systems (vision, radar and lidar), for triple redundancy. But lidar is a problem for Elon Musk - the hardware is very expensive. Making it impossible to include in every car for just $10k extra. So he keeps claiming he can do it on vision alone.

This is really like Theranos, reloaded.

As I said four weeks ago, Musk must know all that. It surprises me how incoherent he is between building his image as the visionary genius and fooling people (to put it mildly) all the time. And also being ruthless to his workers. Why would anyone be doing that? Does the fate of Tesla depend on paying people below the minimum wage? Is there no human left in the skin of the celebrity entrepreneur? Surely We Can Do Better...

This should also be a warning sign to investors and faithful Tesla followers. Even if... Even if  they make the FSD system working somehow, it is just impossible this will then be delivered to the cars overnight as an upgrade. Look at the COVID-19 vaccines: they were developed within weeks since the outbreak and then it took a year for the trials and approvals. Approving a self driving car for public roads will be a very long (and uncertain) process. Also, they will not just jump from the current Level 2 straight to Level 5. And there are very significant obstacles when going through levels 3 and 4, which still require (some) driver attention. That is probably the most difficult part. From my driving experience I can say my most dangerous driving - due to losing attention -  has always happened during comfortable, semi-assisted stretches, such as long straights on cruise control. This has also been confirmed by Waymo. If the road and the conditions are demanding - I stay fully concentrated and alert, otherwise it happens that I just "drift away" with my thoughts elsewhere. I think it is impossible to expect a car will drive itself 95% of the time, and the driver will stay fully concentrated and ready to take over in a difficult situation within seconds. Which probably means levels 3 and 4 will have to be skipped eventually, and that simply means FSD will not happen this nor next year.