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Tesla has long promised to offer a "self-driving" option to its cars on the order page of the company's website.
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, says on Twitter that option will be temporarily available "off the menu", much like the Animal Style fries at the level of an In-N-Out burger joint. He will quickly leave the secret menu and will only come back when the company is ready to deploy it. The self-driving option "caused too much confusion" so that customers could justify keeping it in the foreground, he said. The company declined to comment.
Three years ago, Musk claimed that Tesla's vehicles would be ready and able to drive themselves without any human interaction by 2017. Two years ago, Musk had announced that every car manufactured would have the hardware necessary to achieve this objective. Tesla has spent the years since advertising this impending breakthrough on his website as an easy addition to the purchase of a new car, something that only required a few thousand dollars and a little patience.
These promises, however, have all weakened since. Musk recently admitted that the company will have to improve cars already on the road with new equipment – more precisely, a new artificial intelligence chip – to equip them with complete self-driving capabilities. (Even then, some in the industry believe that Tesla's cars do not have a crucial piece of the stand-alone puzzle.) Tesla missed Musk's estimate for 2017 regarding the deployment of the pipe autonomous at least one year. And now, Tesla has reduced the visibility of complete self-driving in general, raising questions about the company's approach to one of its biggest goals.
"Tesla has had a ton of problems with its autonomous driving approach," says Rob Enderle, technology analyst for the Enderle Group, in an email to The edge. It shows how Tesla has been using the term "autopilot" for years, even though its cars are currently able to handle driving autonomously only in very specific situations, and still under the driver's supervision.
Tesla had to deal with regulatory mishaps. In 2016, the German government asked the company to stop using the term autopilot, arguing that it was a "misleading" consumer. And this week again, the European New Car Assessment Program – a coalition of security led by a number of governments and transit agencies across the continent – issued a report criticizing the promotion of autopilot by Tesla. Tesla, wrote Euro-NCAP, has released videos that "confuse consumers about the actual capabilities of the autopilot system".
Musk's assertion about consumer confusion was backed up by a new poll released last week. Commissioned by Euro-NCAP and Thatcham, a research company created by the auto insurance industry, the survey surveyed 1,567 car owners from China, France, Germany, the United States, and the United States. Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom. It is striking that 71% of respondents think they can buy a self-driving car now, which is not true. The survey also revealed that one in ten drivers "would be tempted to take a nap" if he used semi-autonomous systems such as autopilot. It's dangerous: Tesla is asking users to keep their hands on the steering wheel in case the car needs to return control to the driver.
A driving aid system currently exists in a sort of mysterious valley In the right parameters, systems such as the autopilot give the impression that the car can truly drive itself, which in turn can give rise to a false sense of security or a darkening of the driver's consciousness. It's not just a question of voting; Tesla himself said that a pilot who died using the autopilot at the beginning of the year had been warned several times not to have his hands on the wheel a few minutes before the impact, a sign that the driver was -be too dependent on the car's capabilities.
Enderle thinks that Tesla's new, more conservative approach to promoting the option of complete self-driving is an effort to "hide" this growing problem. "It should be binary, release a system that works or not, do not release a system that does not work and make it difficult to control," he says. "It sounds incredibly stupid."
There are other ways to look at the decision. Switching from option to spotlight "seems to be a way for Tesla to tell his hardcore fans that if you want to give us extra money, we'll be happy to take it." said Sam Abuelsamid, senior analyst at Navigant research.
ARK-Invest analyst Tasha Keeney said he did not believe the removal of autonomous driving was an option, which would indicate a shift in Tesla's ultimate goal of making cars fully capable of driving alone. . "Musk on Twitter has told us that Tesla is going to realize its plan to trade the Nvidia board into customers' cars, which, combined with the chip update we heard during the earnings call, seems indicate that they are still executing their standalone plan, "Keeney writes in an e-mail. "Unless I hear something else, I do not think it would change our long-term thesis" about the success of Tesla's autonomy goals, she says.
ARK-Invest, one of the most optimistic companies about Tesla's future in this field, recently felt that the so-called network of the next automaker – who should be ready from here end of 2019 – could generate $ 200 billion in annual revenue from services in a world where fully autonomous cars are the norm.
Prior to the changes made this week to the full auto-drive option, Tesla also delayed the release of another autopilot feature. Tesla has introduced autopilot navigation as "the most advanced autopilot function to date," allowing the car to drive on the ramp, take the right exit, manage highway traffic and even suggest lane changes. It was originally intended to be included in the Tesla Vehicle Software Version 9.0 and was supposed to be the first in a series of new features to be incorporated into the company's driver assistance system.
But when version 9.0 came out earlier this month, Navigate on Autopilot was missing. Tesla said it still needed a few weeks of validation and that, in the meantime, cars equipped with version 9.0 would collect data to make the feature more accurate when it was launched.
Another conclusion to which the Euro-NCAP survey came was that much of this confusion could be mitigated if features such as autopilot, or even cruise, were subject to more stringent standards. According to the survey, 74% of users were in favor of standardized naming conventions for adaptive cruise control, trajectory management and other features associated with systems such as autopilot. In addition, 77% reported watching a training video or taking an online course to better understand these features.
"The lack of driver training and standardized controls, symbols and names for these functions, further complicates the task of consumers," said Matthew Avery, Thatcham's research director, in a statement.
But a larger point remains. Promises such as complete self-driving can engender a false sense of security and confusion for the consumer. And these are the last things you want when people's lives are at stake. "Cars, even those equipped with advanced driver assistance systems, need a vigilant and attentive driver behind the wheel, anytime, "said Avery.
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