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Leon Fourier's avatar

I don't understand how Musk thinks that 10,000 miles per intervention is something worth bragging about on an earnings call. That kind of rate would make scaling beyond a trivial number of cars totally unfeasible, and represent a significant public safety hazard. Was he trying to imply that they can improve that figure by orders of magnitude in a couple of months? I can't see how that would be possible. If such quick and easy improvements were attainable they'd have already been implemented long ago.

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Daniel Abreu Marques's avatar

Great post Phil, appreciate your work and articles about the AV industry!

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Harry Campbell's avatar

Good post Phil, what's tricky about Tesla and the AV industry in general is that there aren't binary measures of safety. It's all a bit subjective and anecdotal. I have people telling me that Waymo is not safe yet I have taken dozens of rides, including an 80 minute one the other day and feel completely safe. Obviously it's not a big sample size but I don't personally think Tesla is at Waymo's level of safety.

So come June, I won't be sitting in the back of a Tesla robotaxi but I know some/maybe many people will :)

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Phil Koopman's avatar

Thanks for the thoughts Harry.

The tricky part about safety is that it lives out at one-in-a-million, while everyday experience is one-in-a-dozen/hundred.

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Harry Campbell's avatar

Yep totally fair. Which is why if I don't feel safe anecdotally in a Tesla, that's really bad :)

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George Leopold's avatar

This sounds like the ground version of air traffic control, which is of course is fraught with safety issues, especially on taxiways. If I see a Tesla robotaxi approaching, I’m going to pull over. (BTW, this post was informative as well as “entertain[ing]”!)

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Junko Yoshida's avatar

Phil, thank you for spelling out about a "remote-supervised" FSD scenario. Even if the practice of using a remote operator is not new, this opens a whole new can of worms!

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