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E.W. Niedermeyer Profile picture
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19 Apr, 5 tweets, 2 min read
If onboard data wasn't destroyed in the fire, we'll know the truth about Autopilot's role in this crash.

If onboard data was destroyed in the fire, we only have Tesla's word for what it shows because there is no independent chain of custody.

"So far" seems like a hedged bet.
It appears that I am no longer the only person concerned about chain of custody issues for vehicle data related to crashes that may have involved Autopilot. I can't remember a time when a warrant was used to obtain data from Tesla, so this seems big.
To clarify, it seems that the Precinct 4 Constable Mark Herman quoted in the tweet embedded above has subpoenaed the offboard vehicle data, which makes more sense than an arrest warrant. click2houston.com/news/local/202…
Well, now Reuters is quoting Constable Herman as saying police would be serving Tesla with search warrants for data related to the Houston crash.

Presumably this is for the offboard data, not onboard, but it's not clear. Any idea @davidshepardson?

nasdaq.com/articles/polic…
More new details from Reuters:

Police: "We have witness statements from people that said they left to test drive the vehicle without a driver and to show the friend how it can drive itself"

Police: if Tesla has pulled data, Musk hasn't told us that

reuters.com/business/autos…

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E.W. Niedermeyer Profile picture
20 Apr
OK, we need to talk about this clip.

Let's start with the easy stuff: @Lebeaucarnews got a basic fact wrong, his own outlet (@CNBC) has reported that NHTSA has opened at least 28 investigations into Tesla crashes and 24 of those are STILL OPEN TODAY. cnbc.com/2021/04/19/tes…
Obviously the fact that most of NHTSA's Tesla crash investigations are still open casts doubt on @Lebeaucarnews' opinion that they exonerated Tesla and blamed the driver.

But the biggest issue I have here is Phil's framing: this is not a choice between blaming driver or system.
By far the most in-depth investigations of Autopilot-involved crashes were by the @NTSB, and in every case they found that the design of the system contributed to misuse and the crash/death. Not one or the other, but both.

Has anyone actually read these?
Read 11 tweets
E.W. Niedermeyer Profile picture
18 Apr
Two people dead, nobody in the driver seat. 6,000 lb experiments in half-baked, camera-only autonomy, capable of doing 0-60 in under 3 seconds, just roaming the streets. I love living in a SciFi dystopia. click2houston.com/news/local/202…
We don't know what happened here, but we shouldn't be at all surprised that it has happened.

It's not just that a life-and-death experiment is allowed to play out, in the hands of amateurs, on public streets. It's that a chorus of ghouls cheers it to this inevitable conclusion.
Just watch: today the ghouls will all be singing from the second stanza of their hymnbook. Today will be filled with cries of "it's just driver assistance" and "the driver is always responsible."

In a week they will all be back to "it basically drives itself! The future is now!"
Read 7 tweets
E.W. Niedermeyer Profile picture
17 Apr
Can someone explain how humans might make this uniquely hospitable planet uninhabitable, but somehow not do the exact same thing to far, far less hospitable planets?

Please, game that out for me.
Saw a tweet yesterday comparing SpaceX to the Dutch East India Company... as a good thing.

I had to literally put my phone down. The sheer inaccuracy of the comparison (um, what resources are there to plunder on Mars?) was exceeded only by its historically-illiterate amorality.
There's a real kernel of truth there though: claiming, occupying and despoiling any perceived vacuum within our grasp is a consistent human drive, as is the need to dress it up in the latest flavors. Space gives this drive new scope, while "saving" us from its consequences here.
Read 5 tweets
E.W. Niedermeyer Profile picture
14 Apr
Bold take from a guy whose "Autopilot" has been identified by the @NTSB as a contributing factor in multiple fatal crashes!
In fact, the Ford system that Elon is bashing here has the very two features that the NTSB determined could have prevented those fatal Autopilot-involved crashes: a camera-based driver monitoring system, and operational design domain limits. Autopilot still doesn't have these!
Here are the NTSB investigations of three fatal Autopilot crashes:

Josh Brown: ntsb.gov/investigations…

Jeremy Banner: ntsb.gov/investigations…

Walter Huang: ntsb.gov/investigations…

Watch the last NTSB hearing on Autopilot safety issues (Feb 2020) here:
Read 4 tweets
E.W. Niedermeyer Profile picture
10 Apr
Critical as I am, I generally give Tesla credit for their powertrains and Superchargers... but this 739-page thread about loss of range and/or charging speed and/or increased "vampire drain" makes me wonder. Some (understandably) angry owners. teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/su…
The guy who has done more to help owners understand these problems than anyone, @wk057, is now being pushed out of the community by TMC mods. I saw the owner-investor war for TMC's soul coming years ago, and unsurprisingly the investors have won.
Here's what the conflict comes down to: owners want an open exchange of information about the products they have spent a lot of money on, while investors want to suppress or spin any information they perceive as being negative for the company. This is a big issue for a forum!
Read 4 tweets
E.W. Niedermeyer Profile picture
10 Apr
Reminder: radar used to be the "future of Tesla's self-driving Autopilot." If you read the afterword to the paperback edition of Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors you know that Tesla even spent years developing radar in-house inverse.com/article/20833-…
If radar is so useless, why do the early Model Xs have brackets for corner radar? ebay.com/p/700484339

The TMC guys even stumbled onto the fact that Model X was supposed to have corner radar: teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/posts/3223…

Even Elon knows sensor diversity/redundancy matters.
The radar story matters because it reveals that Musk has been fumbling for a strategy even after he started taking customer cash for FSD, he was naive enough to think Tesla could beat Bosch/Conti, and that the north star for this safety-critical tech is cost and not safety.
Read 5 tweets

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