The obvious question to me is that if "Full Self-Driving" <i>doesn't</i> imply autonomy, what is it supposed to imply? Here is the relevant quote from the article:<p>> While testifying last week, Tesla engineer Eloy Rubio Blanco repudiated the allegations that the name “Full Self-Driving” was chosen to deceive the public. Blanco stated that Tesla drivers did not believe that their vehicles were autonomous.<p>It doesn't say anywhere else how he thinks the public is supposed to interpret "full self-driving." As a native speaker of English, I'm baffled to think of what else it could be intended to mean.
I have a Tesla. I'm eligible for the FSD beta.<p>Autopilot is great. It does the boring repetitive parts of driving. It behaves predictably in response to stimuli, and generally errs on the side of caution. This causes it to be suboptimal in ways that the driver can account for. As an example: when making lane changes, Autopilot is very sluggish, to the point that if there's any traffic at all, you have to give it a kick on the accelerator to complete the move.<p>FSD is a trashfire. I'd say the closest description is like you're constantly supervising a 15 year old learning to drive for the first time. Where I live, it'll disregard no-right-on-red and creep past stop lines that are set back from a light. It'll try to take turns and then lose track of which lane it wanted. The cognitive load of babysitting FSD is worse than just doing the driving myself.
This makes me think of a recent experience I can relate to. I got a new iPhone that has a feature called, and I quote, an "Always-On display." According to <a href="https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213435" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213435</a>:<p><pre><code> Always-On display goes dark when you don't need it
To save battery life, the display is completely dark when:
• Your iPhone is lying face down
• Your iPhone is in your pocket or bag
• [...]
</code></pre>
These seem reasonable to me, at least they haven't caused any noticeable problems. But it goes on, including:<p><pre><code> • You haven't used your iPhone for a while
(your iPhone learns your activity patterns
and turns the display off and on accordingly,
including if you set up an alarm or sleep schedule)
</code></pre>
This one's kinda infuriating. Every now and then, it's dark when I look at it, and I try to repeatedly "teach" it that I'm not asleep and it shouldn't have gone dark, or give up and try to ignore that it's not doing what I expected from it.<p>What makes it frustrating more than anything is the feature's name: "Always-On display." If not for that, I think its actual best-effort behavior is fairly reasonable.
Watching law happen in the media is funny. I don't think a reasonable person test would work here. "Nobody would believe it really was self driving" is trying to say "when we said that, we didn't mean that" which simply swaps one lawsuit (risk to the community) for another (you lied to the SEC)<p>I don't have a time machine, so it's a bit untestable but what do you, reasonable HN readers think the person in the street would say if you vox-pop'd "what does FSD mean"<p>Fully is pretty well understood.<p>Self has a really specific meaning.<p>Driving.. is what happens to make cars move safely, or not.<p>But "Fully self driving" actually means "not fully self driving" .. ok.. how did the "not" get in there?
So it’s like when “Synthetic” motor oil doesn’t actually mean the oil is synthetic because “synthetic” != “100% synthetic” ?<p>Words have no meaning anymore. Up is down. Left is right.
The original (apparently staged) FSD promo video featured a tagline which read, “The person in the driver's seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself.”<p>What a dangerous fraud.
Absolute bullshit.<p>Musk has been saying that you will be able to have your Tesla earn money for you as a robotaxi lmao.<p>Maybe I should “fully pay”(make a deposit) on their car then refuse to actually fully pay because that doesn’t imply fully paying.<p>Absolute donkeys.
As reported, he seems to only be saying "there might be bugs". The "certain limitations" had better have been explored by the plaintiff lawyers.
I'd hate to be the engineer caught between perjury and Musk's interests. It'd take a lot of RSUs to compensate.
The name really doesn’t matter. I don’t know why everyone is always arguing about it. It’s very clear that it isn’t autonomous when you buy and use it, and that most of what you’re buying is future updates.
They are so totally full of shit.<p>Sorry, that's against the site rules and all. But what else is there to say about such colossal delusion and doubletalk?<p>If they'd said, for instance, 'full driving' we'd have thought sure, it has all the features but still, take care it might be buggy.<p>If they'd said 'self driving' again we'd think, it can do it but maybe not in all circumstances.<p>But they said it all; 'Full self-driving' means it does the whole enchilada. It can mean nothing else. It's normal English, well-understood by anybody who is listening. No ambiguity. No wiggle room.<p>These guys ought to be enjoined to stop selling their irresponsible death machines.
It's hilarious seeing hn turn on Musk and Tesla (and self-driving cars in general) after years of being told here that "you just don't get it" when pointing out the absurdity of Tesla being worth more than all the other auto companies <i>combined</i>.