Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

If you are an ordinary consumer who is not familiar with the latest technology, what function do you think it is when you see Autopilot or Full Self-Driving? Literally, it's autopilot, but is it really autopilot?

(neither Tesla Autopilot nor FSD is on autopilot.)

The acquisition of Twitter caught fire in the backyard last Thursday, Musk, the world's richest man, satisfactorily completed the acquisition of Twitter, after six months of forced takeovers, public reversals and dispute lawsuits. Musk finally bought the world's most influential social media platform for $44 billion.

As soon as the acquisition was completed, Musk couldn't wait to clean up Twitter. He immediately disbanded the Twitter board, fired Parag Agrawal, the Indian-born CEO he disliked, as well as executives such as CFO and the general counsel, and planned to cut more than 7000 Twitter employees by half and launch his own Twitter transformation plan aggressively.

In order to implement his plan more efficiently, Musk decided to take up a temporary CEO position on Twitter, hired many of his venture capital friends as transformation consultants, and transferred technical backbones from his Tesla, underground tunnel company Boring and neuroscience company Neuralink to Twitter to censor the social media code. These include more than 50 software engineers in charge of Autopilot.

However, just as Musk focused on Twitter, Tesla's core product function, Autopilot, also became the focus of news last week. This time the news on Autopilot is not because of product upgrades or car accidents, but because it has become the subject of a criminal investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice.

In fact, the US Department of Justice has been investigating more than 10 car accidents involving Tesla since last year. Tesla's Autopilot system was in a start-up state when these accidents occurred. The goal of the criminal investigation of the US Department of Justice is the naming and marketing of Autopilot.

Specifically, the departments of the Federal Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. And San Francisco will jointly investigate whether Tesla misrepresented the function of his driving assistance technology. There is misleading consumers, investors and regulators.

Criminal investigation is different from civil investigation, which means that the process and standards of investigation and collection of evidence by the US Department of Justice will be very cautious and strict. The US Department of Justice may obtain Tesla's internal emails and text messages to find out whether Musk and other Tesla executives deliberately exaggerated the Autopilot function for Tesla's sales. Such evidence will be key to the Justice Department's future decision on whether to prosecute or not.

If the Ministry of Justice finds tangible evidence, Tesla and his executives could be held criminally liable, and criminal proceedings are more serious than civil ones. Of course, it is also possible that the investigation ended in vain, and Tesla walked out unharmed. As the investigation is still ongoing, the US Department of Justice declined to disclose specific progress.

(the owner of Tesla fell asleep in an Autopilot.)

What is the problem with the assistant driver's registered automatic Autopilot system? This feature has caused a lot of controversy since its release in 2014. Because Autopilot is not a literal autopilot system, it is actually an advanced auxiliary driving system (ADAS) which includes automatic lane maintenance, automatic lane change, automatic parking, automatic cruising and many other functions.

However, Tesla named the assisted driving system "Autopilot" and hinted and explicitly indicated that the vehicle could drive automatically many times in the marketing process. A 2018 survey by the AAA Traffic Safety Foundation (AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety) showed that 40% of car owners thought the Autopilot on their cars could be self-driving.

In contrast, Tesla China's translation of Autopilot as "autopilot system" is more accurate and realistic. However, Tesla's Chinese translation, also known as "autopilot", was also changed after a lawsuit was filed in 2016 after Tesla Autopilot was killed in a car accident in China.

There is no doubt that Autopilot is the core function and main selling point of Tesla tram. Tesla and Musk will also highlight the convenience brought by the Autopilot function when marketing their own tram products. In a 2016 conference call, Mr Musk said the Autopilot system was "probably better than human drivers".

The Full Self-Driving system released by Tesla in 2020 has once again sparked controversy over naming and marketing. Despite the sign of "fully autopilot", Tesla's system is still an L2 + ADAS, rather than a literal fully autopilot (equivalent to L4).

Both Autopilot and FSD require the driver to stay focused and take over at any time. According to the SAE autopilot rating standard adopted by the U.S. Department of Transportation, even if the vehicle can drive on its own under certain conditions, such a driving system belongs to the L2 level as long as the driver is required to continuously monitor the driving condition and take over the vehicle at any time.

However, Musk and Tesla also kept hinting at the fully autopilot function of the auxiliary driving system when they were marketing the FSD system. In Musk's own words last week, the upgraded FSD allows Tesla to "go to the office, to a friend's house, to the grocery store, without even having to touch the steering wheel." The FSD video on Tesla's website reads, "people sit in the driver's seat only for legal reasons. He doesn't want to do anything. The car will drive by itself."

Of course, Tesla will also explicitly warn car owners that they must put their hands on the steering wheel and maintain control of the vehicle when using the Autopilot function. Tesla's website clearly states that Autopilot technology only helps control direction, braking, speed and lane change, which does not allow the vehicle to drive on its own. Moreover, before starting the Autopilot function, the driver must agree to "keep your hands on the steering wheel at all times and keep control of the vehicle at all times."

Even after Musk promoted the omnipotence of the FSD last week, he would stress, "the driver's seat still needs to be seated. We won't say that the car can now sit behind the steering wheel without sitting."

The world's richest man is deeply involved in investigations, and Musk, who goes his own way, is no stranger to federal regulatory investigations, and he and Tesla have been investigated and prosecuted by regulators over the years.

In 2018, he was investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for falsely announcing on Twitter that he planned to privatize Tesla. With prosecution almost certain, Musk was forced to reach a settlement with SEC, paid a fine of $20 million each with Tesla, resigned as chairman of Tesla, and agreed that future comments involving Tesla should be submitted to lawyers for review. At the beginning of this year, Musk's application to remove the pre-trial of tweets was also rejected by a federal judge. In the process of acquiring Twitter, Musk is currently under investigation by SEC for failing to disclose his stake in Twitter in a timely manner.

Since last year, Tesla has become the focus of investigation by the legislative and regulatory authorities of the United States and California, while the Autopilot function has become the focus of investigation, and the scope and level of the investigation are constantly expanding and upgrading. The Justice Department's criminal investigation is also the result of an escalation after a number of regulatory investigations.

Two Democratic senators, Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, have been public critics of Tesla's Autopilot function. In February this year, they publicly asked federal regulators to investigate Tesla's Autopilot function, saying that Tesla released the software without fully considering its risks and consequences, posing a danger to everyone on the road.

After the news that the US Department of Justice had launched a criminal investigation into Tesla Autopilot, two Democratic senators publicly expressed their appreciation for this. The two men said in a public statement that they had been sounding the alarm about Tesla's misleading marketing operation, believing that it exaggerated the actual handling function of the vehicle and posed a serious danger to drivers and the public.

The background that needs to be pointed out is that the relationship between Musk and the currently ruling Democratic Party of the United States is deteriorating. After the outbreak in 2020, Musk, because of the conflict between the epidemic prevention policy and the California government, instructed the Tesla factory to start work and resume production without the approval of the local government, and threatened to leave California with Tesla.

In order to save billions of dollars in taxes (Texas does not have state income tax and capital gains tax), Musk not only sold all California properties and moved to Texas, but also signed Tesla headquarters from California to Austin, Texas. After moving to Texas, Musk kept openly quarreling with progressive leftists such as Warren and Sanders because of tax increases for the rich, trade unions, tram subsidies and other issues, and repeatedly mocked the current economic policy of the US government.

In 2017, the National Highway Safety Administration (hereinafter referred to as NHTSA) investigated the safety of the auxiliary driving system for the first time after the sworn enemy supervisor launched the Autopilot function, but in the end, the investigation concluded that no safety problems were found.

However, in the past few years, the number of fatal accidents involving Tesla's Autopilot has been increasing, especially several tragic accidents in which Autopilot led Tesla directly into a road barrier or a large truck, resulting in a car crash, explosion and fire, which attracted the attention of the media and regulatory authorities. The results of NHTSA's 2017 survey were also questioned, with critics saying that NHTSA did not conduct an in-depth analysis of the reliability of Autopilot and did not disclose detailed data.

"We are still in the Wild West," Jennifer Homendy, chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, said of Autopilot technology in 2020. She believes that fake marketing and large-scale deployment of driver-assisted driving technology that is not yet mature is "like waiting for a disaster to come".

Raj Rajkumar, an electrical engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon University, said in early 2020 that many car accidents have proved that Tesla's Autopilot technology is not mature enough, cameras and radar sensors are not accurate enough, and if regulators do not take timely measures to intervene, there will be more tragedies.

Musk doesn't think so. he believes that Autopilot effectively reduces the incidence of car accidents, which are caused by the owner's failure to keep paying attention as required. In 2020, Musk released Tesla's upgraded version of Advanced Auxiliary driving Technology FSD.

Perhaps what Mr Musk did not foresee, however, is that the regulatory environment for assisted driving technology in the US is changing significantly. Last October, the National Highway Safety Administration (NHTSA) appointed Mary Cummings, a professor at Duke University, as a senior adviser on safety technology. The appointment is widely seen as a clear sign of a shift in the direction of NHTSA regulation, a shift from dovish to hawkish and from "encouraging new technologies to road testing" to "safety is a top priority".

Kunming, 56, is a professor in the Department of computer Science and Electronic Engineering at Duke University and director of the Human and Automation Lab. She was the first female fighter pilot in the United States Navy. After retiring, she entered academia, taught at Virginia Tech, MIT and Duke University, and became a fellow of the American Academy of Aeronautics and Astronautics. To avoid conflicts of interest, Kunmins resigned from the board of global auto parts supplier giant Veoneer and sold off all its holdings before joining NHTSA.

Over the past few years, Kunming's research interest has clearly shifted to the field of artificial intelligence and automation, with particular attention to the safety and social and moral impact of self-driving technology. Over the past few years, Kunmins has bluntly criticized Tesla AutoPilot, arguing that the reliability and marketing of the technology have problems of ignoring security and misleading users.

Mr Musk was strongly dissatisfied with Mr Kunmins's appointment as the technical helm in the direction of self-driving regulation in the US. Musk used his Twitter influence to publicly criticize Kunmins for his serious bias against Tesla, believing that the US regulatory appointment was deliberately aimed at Tesla and even launched nearly 20, 000 Tesla employees to sign a petition to boycott NHTSA's appointment. However, his boycott did not affect the inauguration of Kunming. Us Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and NHTSA have come forward to openly support Kunmins. NHTSA stressed that she was appointed to look forward to her professional experience and leadership in the field of security and automation technology.

Regulatory attitudes are getting tougher. 2021 is the year when US regulators turn to assisted driving technology. Regulators from the federal to California have significantly tightened their regulation of the assisted driving system and put pressure on Tesla and Autopilot through a series of regulatory investigations and inquiries.

In June last year, NHTSA asked car companies to submit reports on car accidents under the assisted driving system mode. In August last year, NHTSA launched an investigation into a series of car accidents involving Tesla. One of the focus cases is that the car owner crashed directly into an emergency vehicle parked on the side of the road with the Autopilot function, resulting in a car crash and death.

In February, NHTSA announced an investigation into 416m Tesla trams equipped with Autopilot after it received more than 350 complaints from owners that their Tesla Autopilot suddenly slowed down the brakes without warning. At the same time, NHTSA is also constantly putting pressure on Tesla's security software upgrade operation. Under the direct pressure of NHTSA, Tesla recalled the FSD system twice in November last year and February this year.

In June, NHTSA announced that during the 10 months of its investigation, there had been 392 suspected advanced driving assistance (ADAS) accidents in the United States, resulting in six deaths and five serious injuries. Of these accidents, 273 involved Tesla's Autopilot, FSD and related functions, five of which resulted in deaths. Therefore, NHTSA decided to expand the scope of the investigation to 830000 Tesla trams equipped with Autopilot, requiring Tesla to submit specific operation data.

California regulators are also targeting Tesla Autopilot marketing. In July, the California Motor vehicle Administration (DMV) formally filed a lawsuit after a year-long investigation, accusing Tesla of false marketing and misleading marketing operations in the Autopilot system. This is the first time that California's DMV has adopted operational measures for the naming and marketing of Tesla's Autopilot, which has been criticized for being too lenient in Tesla's regulation.

Tesla has filed a complaint against the lawsuit, asking for a hearing to defend himself. The lawsuit could affect not only the naming of Tesla's Autopilot, but also other automakers' sales of cars with driving assistance systems in California. If DMV wins, Tesla will be forced to change the naming and marketing of Autopilot and FSD.

There is a spate of regulatory measures. In early September, the California legislature passed a bill requiring tighter regulation of the marketing of driving aids by car companies. Although the bill does not directly name Tesla, which applies to all car companies that sell driving aids, it is clear that Tesla's Autopilot function has prompted California lawmakers to pay attention to the issue, given the many California DMV survey data cited by lawmakers. The bill is also widely supported by California Democrats.

"car companies and dealers are not allowed to sell any new passenger cars equipped with partial self-driving functions, or provide any software updates and vehicle upgrades with additional self-driving functions, except when delivering and updating vehicles," the bill said. inform car buyers or car owners of the names of the relevant functions and clearly describe the functions and limitations of the relevant features. "

Lena Gonzalez, a Democrat and chairman of the California Senate Transportation Committee, said bluntly, "California consumers think the FSD is a fully self-driving system, but this is not the case." although other car companies, such as General Motors, Ford or BMW-Benz, also have auxiliary driving, they do not imply that cars will drive on their own in marketing. They clearly show the limitations of automation technology, which is the right (marketing operation).

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