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

Beijing, March 20 (Xinhua) Tesla CEO Elon Musk (Elon Musk) regards fully autopilot system (FSD) as a key technology to prove the value of the company. But foreign media published an article on Sunday about how the world's richest man complicates one of his biggest bets through reckless decisions, stubbornly insisting on being a maverick and a firm confidence in an unproven vision.

Long before Musk became the boss of Twitter, he had a different fascination: letting Tesla drive himself. The technology is expensive, but when the car supply chain collapsed two years ago, Musk was determined to cut costs.

Despite opposition to radar, he targeted the car's radar sensor, which is designed to detect long-distance dangers and prevent vehicles from crashing into other vehicles in traffic. At that time, Tesla's streamlined body had installed eight cameras to observe road conditions and detect dangers in all directions. Mr Musk thinks this is enough.

Some Tesla engineers were petrified by Musk's reaction. They contacted a trusted former Tesla executive to know how to persuade Mr Musk to abandon the plan. In the absence of radar, if the camera is obscured by raindrops or even bright sunlight, Tesla is prone to basic perceptual errors, which can lead to car crashes.

Even if equipped with radar, Tesla's car is not as sophisticated as the car of its rival equipped with lidar and radar. " A key advantage of lidar is that it will never miss a train or truck, even if it doesn't know what it is, "said Brad Templeton, a longtime self-driving car developer and consultant who used to work for Google self-driving cars." it knows there is something ahead and the vehicle can stop without knowing it. "

Cameras in Model Y, by contrast, need to understand what they see in order to work. Tesla employees tag images recorded by vehicles, including stop signs and trains, to help the software understand how to react.

Musk was unimpressed and rejected the engineer's opinion. In May 2021, Tesla announced that he would cancel the radar in his new car. Soon after, the company began banning radar on cars that were already on the road. The move caused Tesla to suddenly lose a key sensor, leading to an increase in crashes, attempted accidents and other embarrassing errors, according to interviews with nearly 12 former employees, test drivers, safety officials and other experts.

Musk advocates "pure vision" technology, which he thinks is simpler, cheaper and more intuitive. In February 2022, he wrote on Twitter: "the road system is designed for cameras (eyes) and neural networks (brains)." But some former employees interviewed said it brought risks. "all I know is that it's not safe to put that system on the street," said a former Tesla Autopilot engineer. "you can't predict what the car will do."

The generation of ghost brakes Tesla's former employee said that Tesla's problems appeared almost immediately after the radar removal was announced. At the same time, Tesla's fully autopilot test program has also expanded from thousands of drivers to tens of thousands of drivers. According to the complaint submitted by the owner to the regulator, the car is said to have suddenly stopped because of the imagined danger, misunderstood the road signs and found no obstacles such as emergency vehicles.

Some people interviewed by foreign media said that the sudden increase in Tesla's "ghost brake" report was due to the lack of radar. Data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) analyzed by foreign media show that the incidence of such traffic accidents surged last year, prompting federal regulators to investigate.

According to lidar data used by Waymo, complaints about "ghost brakes" have risen to 107 in the past three months, compared with 34 in the previous 22 months. NHTSA received about 250 complaints about the problem within two weeks after the problem was reported. NHTSA said it had received 354 complaints about the issue in nine months and subsequently launched an investigation.

"it's not the only reason they're in trouble, but it's important," said Missy Cummings, a former NHTSA senior security consultant who criticised the company's approach and chose to avoid matters related to Tesla. "Radar helps detect objects in the area ahead. For computer vision full of errors, it is used as a way of sensor fusion to check for problems."

As the chief tester, Mr Musk also requires frequent bug fixes of the system, requiring engineers to step in and adjust the code. "No one can come up with a good idea when being chased by a tiger," a former executive recalled, as an engineer on the project told him.

Tesla's troubles stem from the speed of development, Musk's decision to cancel cost-cutting measures such as radar deviating from industry practices, and other problems unique to Tesla, former employees of Tesla said in an interview. These employees used to work in Tesla's auxiliary driving system department.

Musk's erratic leadership style is also to blame, they say, forcing employees to develop fully autopilot technology at breakneck speed and bring it to the public before it is ready. Some people say they are worried that even today, Tesla's fully autopilot system is not safe to use on the road.

John Bernal, a former Autopilot test operator for Tesla, said "the system is only moving very slowly internally", but "the public wants to use such a product". He was fired in February 2022 when he released a video of a fully autopilot system in practice and was accused by Tesla of improperly using the technology.

"Musk has been tweeting,'Oh, we're almost there, we're almost there,'" Bernal said. "but in terms of internal progress, we're still a long way off, so now we have to work harder and harder." In recent months, the team has also lost some members, including executives.

At the same time, Musk dispatched dozens of Tesla engineers to code Twitter, according to the Autopilot system used by Model 3, according to information and documents provided by people familiar with the matter. Twitter, a troubled social media platform, was acquired with a high profile by Musk last fall. Earlier this month, Tesla's share price fell 6 per cent after it failed to announce a major new product on investor day.

Mr Musk argues that Tesla's efforts to develop a fully autopilot system are a long-term bet that could unleash great value. Tesla said that the collision rate of fully self-driving vehicles is at least five times lower than that of normally driven vehicles. Mr Musk and Tesla have not commented on this.

"working for Musk turned out to be like this, and no one believed me until they saw how he ran Twitter," Mr Bernal said. "what he did on Twitter was just the tip of the iceberg of how he ran Tesla."

Twitter hindered development progress last year, Musk decided to buy Twitter. Musk was distracted by the incident, according to former employees of both companies. After taking the helm of Twitter in October last year, Musk transferred dozens of Tesla engineers, including Autopilot and fully autopilot engineers, to work with him, further hampering Tesla's progress on fully autopilot systems, according to information and documents provided by former employees. At a time when Tesla is solving the loophole and pursuing bigger goals, the system update, which was originally released every two weeks, suddenly falls a few months apart.

Some people are dissatisfied with Musk's effort on Twitter, saying he needs to refocus on Tesla and finish what he started. Tesla investor Ross Gobber (Ross Gerber) is running for Tesla's board seat because he is worried about Tesla's inaction on Musk's part-time role as head of Twitter. He said that fully autopilot bodes well for Tesla's bright future.

"We love Musk. He is the innovator of our time," he said. "We just want to see him go back to Tesla's full-time job."

The uncertain future Musk has said that the key to measuring Tesla's value and worthlessness is "fully self-driving" technology, but his dream of self-driving cars is running into obstacles.

Tesla has recalled and suspended the introduction of fully autopilot systems on qualified vehicles in recent weeks because of concerns that cars might violate the speed limit and rush through stop signs, federal officials said. There have also been a growing number of complaints from clients, including a lawsuit filed in federal court last month, alleging that Musk exaggerated the capabilities of the technology. According to regulatory documents submitted by Tesla, regulators and government officials are reviewing Tesla's system and its past statements because of growing evidence of safety issues.

Tesla's engineers are so exhausted that they are resigning and looking for opportunities elsewhere. Last year, Andrej Karpathy, Tesla's director of artificial intelligence, took a several-month vacation before leaving to join OpenAI, an artificial intelligence research company that developed ChatGPT, which is popular around the world.

According to information and documents provided by employees, Ashok Eruswamy, director of Tesla Autopilot, has taken over the work of Twitter.

One former employee said he moved to Waymo. "Waymo doesn't really want to know if their car will run a red light," the engineer said. "they're just focused on making the whole thing feasible in the long run, not rushing to get it done."

As part of an ongoing investigation, the US Department of Justice has asked Tesla to provide documents related to the fully autopilot system. Meanwhile, the Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating Mr Musk's role in promoting Tesla's autopilot statement as part of a larger investigation.

Welcome to subscribe "Shulou Technology Information " to get latest news, interesting things and hot topics in the IT industry, and controls the hottest and latest Internet news, technology news and IT industry trends.