If you’re not a tech bro, an amateur nerd or a Tesla lover, you might find the revelation that the company’s Full Self Driving (Supervised) tech is hitting Australian roads a little terrifying, but believe me, there’s just so much more to be frightened about.
While the idea that we’ll all soon be sharing the most dangerous activity most of us take part in each day with trusting idiots who think their Teslas — or any camera-based autonomous tech, really — are smart enough to operate without human oversight is scary enough, what’s coming around the pike is much worse.
Tesla is already running a trial of its far more autonomous Cybercab in Austin, Texas, where a carefully selected bunch of brand-positive influencers are being driven around in driverless Model Y SUVs, with predictably variable results.
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At one stage, I didn’t think Australian authorities would allow FSD on our streets, but that’s happened, and while we’ll wait a while before following America on this one, you can bet that in your lifetime you’ll be driving next to cars with no steering wheels, pedals or human empathy.
It might seem a remarkable thought now, but if you have a small child today, by the time they are a teenager you will absolutely, definitely think nothing of sending them off to school or soccer practice in either a self-driving Uber of some kind, or your own autonomous vehicle. It will happen.
Indeed, it already is happening in Arizona, where Waymo has launched its “teen product”, which allows time-poor parents to send their kids around town like Amazon parcels. Waymo CEO Takendra Mawakana says it’s been hugely popular and will be one of the various “products” the self-driving taxi service will be rolling out.
Waymo’s driverless Jaguar I-Paces (soon to be joined by a fleet of Zeekrs and other vehicles) are already running on city streets in San Francisco, Atlanta, Phoenix, Los Angeles and Austin and is aiming for New York City, Washington DC and Miami next. It’s also reportedly ready to make the move to driving on freeways, which is a big step up in risk and speed.
Waymo is already providing about 250,000 paid rides a week (and is already charging more than an Uber driver does, in some cases, which sounds profitable). “And in all likelihood, by the end of next year we will be offering around a million rides per week,” Mawakana says.
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It’s interesting to hear her pushing the product, because she focuses constantly on how much safer it’s going to make our streets, and not on the jobs it will cost, or the danger of a robotic car apocalypse.
Asked about Tesla’s market entry, and the hugely vital fact to note – Tesla makes do with only cameras and GPS information to run its autonomous systems, while Waymo and every single other car maker insists on using LiDAR radar technology as well – she attempted to play nice.
“So you know, more companies trying to make the road safer, that’s a positive thing and we welcome that – you know, our approach is a full sensor suite (as opposed to Tesla’s cameras-only approach), we think that’s really important.”
Here’s the thing, so do I. I’ve been in autonomous taxi in San Francisco, and while it didn’t kill me it didn’t make me more strongly in favour. Earlier this year, while testing Cadillac’s also very common Super Cruise self-driving system (already racking up 45 million kilometres a month in real people’s cars on US roads), it damn near killed me when it simply didn’t see an approaching pick-up truck in a merging lane, at speed.
And Super Cruise DOES use LiDAR, GPS and cameras.
So why doesn’t Musk think radar is a necessary addition for safety? I’ll give you one guess. Musk predicts that the full implementation of driverless autonomy will raise Tesla’s market cap to US$10 trillion. Some argue that the only reason it’s already at US$1 trillion is because investors are banking on him making the self-driving tech not only workable, but ubiquitous.
No and thank you.
I wasn’t invited to Tesla’s media day last week where the important journalists were allowed to take a two-hour FSD test non-drive around Brisbane, but I was very curious to see one of my learned friends pointing out that while the system was generally a work of genius, it couldn’t see potholes and ran over quite a few of them (that could lead to some profitable wheel-replacement work).
And then he went on to indulge in some quite spectacular understatement: “Another incident was perhaps more worrying and happened on approach to a small traffic island in a quiet housing estate. Instead of bearing left and obeying the direction arrow sign, the vehicle paused, erratically shook the steering wheel a few degrees in each direction before driving the wrong way around the island.
“Thankfully there was no traffic traveling in the opposite direction and perhaps the presence of other vehicles would have allowed FSDS to better understand the situation and avoid the error.”
I mean, I’d call that more worrying than hitting potholes, for sure.
In Austin, Texas, meanwhile, the carefully curated Cybercab riders were mostly glowing, although one “more worrying” video did leak out.
“One of the vehicles veered as though it were about to make a left turn, then didn’t, and drove toward the next intersection instead. Before reaching the turn lane, the vehicle was seemingly between a double yellow line, putting the vehicle partway in the path of oncoming traffic”.
It’s worth pointing out that in Australia we’re getting the Supervised version of FSD, which means the driver is meant to pay attention and sit there poised to take over if necessary (wouldn’t it be easier just to drive it yourself?), while this Cybercab on the wrong side of the road has no such safety features.
I’m tipping more and bigger disasters to come. Be suitably afraid. Very afraid.
