This Tesla Robotaxi demo video is a mess.
Watch as the car makes a left turn from the wrong lane, ignoring a red light. The safety operator steps in, and the car comes to a stop… right in the middle of the intersection.
Eventually, it completes the illegal turn after blocking traffic for 45 seconds, which raises the question, what exactly is the safety operator there for?
Not related to self driving, but other shitty car design.
I had a Nissan with a CVT before it was widely known they were garbage. I hit the brakes to avoid someone that ran a red, and the CVT went in to some protection mode and left me and my family stuck in the middle of the intersection for 2 entire light cycles before it’d move again.
Dealership just kept saying it’s fine and it was protecting the CVT from damage after going from throttle to brake quickly. I don’t give a fuck about the CVT, I care about the squishy bits inside the cabin.
After it did that again and the power windows stopped working the same day, I traded it in for a Mazda with a proper transmission. 248k miles later it’s still great.
Damn shame that CVTs are so janky because it’s the only non-manual transmission I’d consider. But reliable CVTs that don’t do fake shifts are hard to come by.
The eCVT in my wife’s Ford C-Max is an absolute dream. It’s so smooth and helps the car take off much faster from a stop than my 350Z, despite having 100 less BHP. Nothing beats the feeling you get from immediate torque when you don’t have to wait for the revs to build. Problem is that it also has a 75% failure rate after 100K miles. She’s at 120K now and it’s still going strong, so she was in the lucky 25%.
I had a Honda with a CVT and it was pretty bulletproof. Never skipped a beat.
What’s the reasoning behind CVTs being the only non-manual transmissions you’d consider?
They lack the nice feel of manuals and the reliability of modern automatics. Have you tried an 8HP or 9G-Tronic? Either one will last you a long time and shift so smooth during relaxed driving that you can’t tell it’s going through gears.
Because the idea of keeping the engine at the ideal rev range regardless of your speed appeals to me. Gears have powerbands, CVTs are always in the sweet spot. How can you do any better than that?
My wife has a versa with a cvt. You couldn’t convince me with 10 gallons of rare whiskey that it’s ever in the sweet spot…
With 8 or 9 speeds, you still never really leave that ideal torque band while driving, no modern engine is so peaky that you’re off peak torque after 100 rpm. The rubber banding sounds/feels weird to me too, even though it’s not inherently bad.
Turbo cars in particular have very long flat torque curves.
Also, what IS the sweet spot? Just like on an auto, it’s software that determines what ratio to use in a CVT. Software is not infallible. Sure they test it, but at the end of the day there’s several factors to balance. There is no “ideal”.
Seriously. If you’re looking for a new car, don’t discount them. Research them. They swap the ZF 8HP into monstrous builds now because of its ability to take shit and its ability to put power into the wheels. ZF engineers managed to make it shift better, have more gears, be more fuel efficient… and at the same time, be more reliable AND contain fewer parts than their outgoing 6 speed. The 9G-tronic is just as good if not better, but only available in Mercedes and very few other cars (Nissan 400Z, Astons). I had one and it made my 2 liter 143kW diesel feel faster than my current remapped 3 liter diesel around 200ish kW.
For my next automotive mishap, I’m considering either the ZF or Aisin 8 speed mated to a V8. Haven’t tried the newer Aisin box yet, but the 6 speed in my first gen Cayenne S was the most solid part of the car lol. I’ve got two terrible ideas and one great idea lined up but since the great idea is a Lexus, it means twice the fuel consumption and less comfort than the horrible ideas. The Lexy is also available as a hybrid with CVT and more power but everyone said its the worse car despite being way more expensive than the 8 speed auto non-hybrid
Gears have powerbands, CVTs are always in the sweet spot.
Isn’t that basically true of automatics with 8+ gears, too?
Yeah, that reads like someone who hasn’t experienced a nice modern automatic. ZF transmissions are magic, smooth when cruising and then shift hard like a DCT when you push them. Some even work with launch modes and they slip the clutches to eek out that extra performance
Nothing beats a great manual though!
Must also be pretty hard on the tires
Can’t say I’ve noticed a difference. The tires wear at a normal rate. The traction and stability systems are very good in this car, despite it being over a decade old at this point. Wheel spin is well-controlled.
Bud. Nossan always was known as trash. You just didn’t do enough research before buying it. No offense. As a dude with buddies that have The last sports cars from Nissan. 300z turbos. Nissan has been garbage for decades.
Nissan CVT has had its fair share of bad press, but CVTs in general are good to go, and more specifically, Toyota’s CVT is a good piece of gear. I don’t doubt your story, but it’s got me real curious about what the issue is. I can’t imagine a scenario where hard braking somehow disables the car, but I know “safety features” in abundance are a thing.
Yeah they apparently ran some scans on the transmission and everything checked out.
The 2nd time I drove straight back to the dealership since I was nearby and they scanned again without shutting the car off and still showed no issue. All I know is it’d act like it was in neutral for about 2 minutes. Then it’d barely creep forward even at 4000 rpm. Going to park and back to drive didn’t help. Restarting the car didn’t help. After about 10 minutes of slowly getting better, it’d be back to normal.
It didn’t just “Run a red light”, it downright attempted a left turn in a lane meant to drive straight through. They’re just lucky that the incoming traffic was stopped when it happened or they might have been t-boned.
It didn’t “run a red light”. In the video, the lights were green when it entered the intersection.
But yeah, it should not have tried to make that turn from that lane.
How come nobody honk? Are they used to this nonsense already?
Thanks to whoever wrote “raises the question” instead of the commonly used yet incorrect “begs the question”.
I’m curious about this distinction. What’s the difference between “raises” and “begs”?
Raising a question means what you think it does. Bringing up a question which is a natural consequence or follow-up to a previously stated point.
The original meaning of begging the question is quite different and is a form of circular argument where the premise of an argument already assumes its conclusion is correct.
I’m more curious about why you don’t see a distinction. Can you show me the usage of “begs” to mean “raise” in any other situation?
Do you raise children? Do you raise concerns? Do you raise animals? Do the Amish raise barns?
Can you say “begs” in any of those situations?
Do you see a street beggar or raiser? Beggars can’t be choosers, why can they be raisers?
Impressive, I have always wanted to die in a car accident thanks Tesla!
Beta testing on the public roads is always a good idea. Privatize the profits and socialize the road hazards and deaths.
It is impressive how bad it is.
They also really need additional sensors. Elon is keep saying that self driving cars only need cameras. But cameras can be blinded or also make mistakes. Hence good self driving cars should atleast have sonar.
As a RADAR guy I have to say they need RADAR, but I might be biased. I suppose LIDAR would be nice too. There’s something called sensor fusion where you combine the measurements of different sensors, ideally using different technologies to get better measurements.
Fun fact: horseshoe crabs have like nine different types of eyes. Even that tail is one big photoreceptor. Sensor fusion is new technology - it’s only been around for 400 million years.
WhyNotBoth.gif
And radar is dirt cheap. Toss a radar module (or two!) under the hood, watch as your cars stop plowing into stuff in the frontal plane of movement. It’s automation so simple that even Hyundai gets it right.
And radar is dirt cheap.
Even by the middle of WWII, radar had been made so cheap that they (the US at least) were putting radar devices into artillery shells. The idea that 80+ years later radar is cost-prohibitive for fucking cars is ludicrous.
My helmet has a radar in it. Like, why the fuck not, toss two in there
Respect for the capital letters
Sorry I meant of course LIDAR.
I like that homeboy was just like “Have a safe ride” and dude responds " we will" or some shit. Like you (tesla) just stuck us in the middle of an intersection making an illegal turn after missing where to pick us up by a block and we’ve been in the car for less than a minute. Don’t tell us to have a safe trip, promise me we are going to get somewhere safely at that point.
At least he didn’t promise that the ride brings you to a better place.
How much was the influencer paid to say this?
It’s invite only. But I have no clue.
It can be impressive and also still not be very good.
Impressions are like dents left in the hood from the impact of pedestrians.
<picture of cute butterfly>
So I think the only button he operator has was the kill switch. Instead the operator should have a second button to report an error or something, without causing the car to do a full stop.
Stopping might have still been a better result than turning in front of incoming traffic though
This was not turning into incoming traffic. Did you even watch the video?
Did you even watch the video
Did you even read the comment? I said “in front of” (as in perpendicular to) not “into”.
That is EXACTLY what this car was trying to do. Take a second to read things properly before you comment maybe.
Its good Tesla gave the safety officers have the tools they need to keep things safe…
Or not.
Hey you know what, lets just throw a million or more of these things into the real world right now. The sooner we can rack up the body count the sooner we can get grifters to scream into the zeitgeist about government control or whatever. Idk let tesla fuck up their value and live in infamy
As dumb as this tech is in its current state, it still seems safer to me than human drivers. So far they’ve had very few accidents. Human drivers will do a dangerous maneuver to get in front of you then at the red light they’ll get out of the car and try kick your ass.
They also have very few cars. There’s like 10 or so of these robotaxis. If you grab 10 human taxi drivers and follow them around for a few months, you’d also expect them to have on average 0 accidents.
I dont have an issue with any of them except tesla. I dont trust their “camera only” method on top of their phantom braking and acceleration, plus whatever else can fail and prevent you from getting out of the car
yeah Tesla is by far the worst of all the brands.
Safety operator was trying to eliminate the witness.
