Wait, I might know the answer. Is it because they don't use LIDAR and they're made by a company headed by some piece of shit who likes to cut costs? Haha, I was just guessing, but ok.
this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2025
563 points (96.2% liked)
Technology
72442 readers
2434 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Tesla tried to do it all at once instead of perfecting the electric tech first and then incrementally adding on advances. They also made change for change’s sake. There’s absolutely no reason mechanical door locks could not have been engineered to work on this car as the default method of opening and closing the door. It’s killing people.
In this crash, part of the blame was on retracting handles on the outside, not the interior locks. If the handle is retracted, it’s tough to open the door from the outside.
- model s has electrically presented handles. The car has to be somewhat functional for the handles to extend …. I haven’t heard of extend on emergency or extend on power lost, or any other failsafe
- model 3/y door handles are not electrical. You have to press on one end to extend the other. You may or may not like them, but at least they don’t have that failure case of what happens when the car loses power
Just FYI all the Tesla cars to my knowledge need power for the doors to open because the handles aren’t physically attached to the door mechanism. They’re all electronic. If you own one of these cars I highly advise you to read the manual and find out where the mechanical door releases are(they’re somewhat hidden).
Another fun fact and this isn’t exclusive to Tesla. If you pay attention when you open the door the window retracts a tiny bit to clear the weatherstripping. If you have no power that can’t happened. What is unique to Tesla as far as I can tell is that their weatherstripping isn’t as large/pliable as other manufacturers or maybe it’s just the assembly. Using the mechanical release with power still retracts the window. In the event the battery is dead or damaged from an accident using the mechanical release requires breaking the window. That means the door is significantly more difficult to open.
There's absolutely a reason to not engineer something you're not required to. It's called capitalism. Tesla cut every corner they could.
By your logic then, capitalism is great, because that means no one would've engineered these crazy locks but instead just used the tried and true ones.
Wait. That's not what happened?
Oh.
No, the problem is they engineered something they didn't need to, because Musk thinks everything should be electric because it's cool. They had to then engineer a mechanical release, because it was required by law (for good reason)
Mechanical door locks would have been cheaper. The fly by wire in the cyber truck is far more expensive, heavier, and far more dangerous than the very well polished power steering systems every other car uses
Maybe it's something like they wanted to make more money on repairs or something... But even that they could've done better by starting from very common, cheap technology
Let's be clear... The real problem here is that Elon Musk, opinion having idiot that he is, made decisions from on high with very little understanding of engineering
Elon : some of you will die, but that is a sacrifice I'm willing to make.
Also, the fact that they removed Lidar sensors and just base their self driving on cameras is plainly stupid.
Technical debt.
If you promise self driving on all cars, but cars already on the road don't have lidar then no car has lidar.
That's not really the case, as Elon's already admitted that there are at least about a half a million Teslas with old HW3 self driving computers that need to have them upgraded to HW4 for them to have the chance at eventually get the FSD the buyers were promised. That's not even mentioning the upgraded cameras the HW4 vehicles have gotten. The reason for Musk not wanting lidar on Teslas is very simple: cost. He thinks it's too expensive and unnecessary, unlike every single other manufacturer working on the same problem.
Upgrading a computer is very different to adding a new sensor array all around the body.
I'm not saying upgrading older cars the only reason for excluding lidar, but I bet it was a large factor.
I mean it’s all true:
- humans drive based on vision alone
- moving to one type of sensor simplifies the ai
- lidar has been much bulkier, much more expensive than other sensors.
Most importantly, since no one has self driving yet, it’s premature to talk about that as a mistake. Let it fail or succeed on its merits. Let other self-driving attempts fail or succeed on their merits.
"humans drive based on vision alone"
Not quite. We use our sense of touch and direction to feel our momentum, like how hard a turn or acceleration is. We can feel steering traction changes like when tires begin to slip under acceleration/deceleration. We feel when we're starting to hydroplane. Cars are a cornucipia of touch feedback that drivers respond to.
Sure but if you make that argument, even relatively dumb cars have that as well. At least antilock brakes have been mandatory for a few years (in the US) and traction control might be as well. Both lead to immediate adjustments in driving, more quickly than any human can react.
More automated cars must have some equivalent feedback on balance, sharpness of turns. I don’t know what it is, but they generally execute smooth comfortable turns.
"Both lead to immediate adjustments in driving, more quickly than any human can react. "
Again, sort of. ABS isn't quicker than humans react, it's a stopgap measure for divers without sufficient skill. It only turns on after you have fucked up and locked your breaks.
"I don’t know what it is, but they generally execute smooth comfortable turns."
Likely a combination of software that defines comfortable zones, including adhering to speed limits and paired with an accelerometer.
I think we are still a very long way off from autodrive. Being able to handle changing conditions like freezing rain and black ice or a flooded road will take time.
Waymo runs a taxi service at scale.
They don’t though. Waymo runs a few pilots in a few specific geolocked locations with essentially hand built cars at a huge loss. They also have human remote supervisions. They do seem fairly successful and maybe their slow careful rollout will eventually be at scale in the areas that need it most. Hopefully it will work.
While it’s easy to argue Tesla hasn’t had those successes yet, they do have the “at scale” part down and are already profitable on the vehicles. They are close enough to self-driving them at they’re willing to try their own pilots with human intervention. If they succeed, they already have the scaling up done and are profitable on hardware so will quickly surpass other competitors.
I like that different companies are taking different approaches, so we have competition. May the best technology succeed!
This is a wonderful attitude to have as long as it's not in the comments of an article about how Tesla's approach is trapping people and burning them alive.
You can choose not to drive bleeding edge technology, but sadly you have no choice in whether to share the road with it.
its on you if you bought a tesla after the twitter purchase, cant have buyers remorse.
Seems like a lot of this technology is very untested and there are too many variables to make it where it should not be out on the roads.
Move fast and break things, but it's a passenger vehicle on a public road.
It's been a nightmare seeing tech companies move into the utility space and act like they're the smartest people in the room and the experts that have been doing it for 100 years are morons. Move fast and break things isn't viable when you're operating power infrastructure either. There's a reason why designs require the seal of a licensed engineer before they can be constructed. Applying a software development mentality to any kind of engineering is asking for fatalities
This is the kind of shit that makes me worried even seeing someone else driving one of these deathtraps near me while I am driving. They could explode or decide to turn into me on the highway or something. I think I about this more than Final Destination when seeing a logging truck these days.
It's one of those rules you make for yourself when you drive...
Like no driving next to people with dents...
Or
Stay away from trucks with random shit in the back not strapped down ...
No driving near New cars, they are new and or it's because they got into an accident so best just be safe...
So
No driving near a Tesla...
If we lived in any sort of reasonable or responsible world then these cars would be banned from public roads all over the globe.
And Tesla would be fined and sued into oblivion.
And the people who knowingly put profits before lives would be individually serve time for manslaughter.
Not to mention obstructing criminal investigations.
load more comments
(35 replies)
Bad code. Guinea pig owners. Cars not communicating with each other. Relying on just the car’s vision and location is stupid.
If they would use lidar you would get speed and distance from surrounding objects, which seems like valuable data for a moving object. With cameras you get a 2d picture that can only guestimate distance using multiple cameras and software.
Also, not only do they rely on "just vision", crucially they rely on real-time processing without any memory or persistent mapping.
This, more than anything else is what bewilders me most.
They could map an area, and when observing a construction hazard save that data and share it with other vehicles so they know when route setting or anticipate the object. Not they don't. If it drives past a hazard and goes around the block it has to figure out how to navigate the hazard again with no familiarity. That's so foolish.
and what’s even more ridiculous than that (imo) is that if every tesla mapped the area, you’d get it from loads of different angles: no more “oops 1 off computer vision edge case”
indeed. new experiences should be remembered...like a human.
view more: next ›