A video was posted on Reddit (now deleted) with an overly confident driver trying to demonstrate the Full Self-Driving (FSD) capabilities of his Tesla car. But a few seconds after expressing his admiration for the car’s capabilities, he has to intervene when the car turns directly into the oncoming lane.
«At the end of the day, you don’t need maps, you don’t need to know where you are at the level of a centimeter», the driver boasted to his friend. «You just need really good AI, really good intelligence».
«All the extra hardware to run Waymo…», he added, before shouting «Shit!» as his car swerved left into oncoming traffic.
Although the driver was able to react in time and turn the steering wheel to the right, this is another sign that the so-called «autonomous driving» Tesla technology is still extremely imperfect — especially when combined with overconfident users.
Even though there was a near accident, the driver did not seem upset.
«This machine can work pretty well even without any of that», — he concluded after taking over the controls.
The driver’s comments emphasize how convincing Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s statements were that self-driving cars do not need sensors other than a set of cameras.
Musk has long maintained that self-driving vehicles do not need LIDAR and other types of advanced sensors to successfully and safely navigate city streets. This approach differs significantly from competing companies such as Waymo.
Musk has repeatedly promised major breakthroughs with each iteration of his company’s controversial FSD software. He also infamously promises every year that Tesla will produce self-driving cars. This has been going on for about 10 years now.
But as the video demonstrates, Tesla still has a lot of work to do before these promises become reality.
Source: futurism