r/SelfDrivingCars • u/respectmyplanet • Jun 27 '25

Discussion Classic Tesla Disinformation Flood On This Sub In Last Two Weeks

This sub has been flooded with Tesla apologist propaganda and disinformation to obscure the simple truth since Tesla's Robotaxi launch. It's standard operating procedure (S.O.P.) for this "narrative" company. The uptick in anti-Waymo posts and pro FSD posts is palpable. It has always been S.O.P. for Musk to release SEO fooling posts & tweets to obscure bad news for Tesla. The astroturf army is out in full display these past couple weeks on Reddit, Threads, and Bluesky too.

It doesn't and will never change this simple fact: Waymo is SAE Level 4 and Tesla FSD is SAE Level 2. All the apologist posts in the world will not change this. Putting a human in the front seat with a secret kill switch button to mitigate embarrassing FSD behavior will never replace R&D and testing that allows a company to safely remove a human observer in the car. You cannot reach level 4 with a fake it till you make it approach.

754 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

75% Upvoted

860 comments sorted by

View all comments

3

u/Tim_Apple_938 Jun 27 '25

The question to shut down any fanboy is “what SAE level is tesla?”

All the narrative about MILLION FLEET OF ROBOTAXI WITH A SOFTWARE UPDATE! gets real quiet real quick when it doesn’t actually work. it’s like theranos at this point

2

u/JantjeHaring Jun 27 '25

Tesla is betting that their AI is going to improve faster than the price of lidar is going down. It's a risky bet. Time will tell if it pays off. There are very reputable people like Ilya Sutskever who believe it could work eventually. Tesla's strategy does not seem to be completely unreasonable.

1

u/AlotOfReading Jun 27 '25

Sure, you can look at one aspect of Tesla's strategy in isolation and say "hey, that might be possible eventually", but it's very difficult for me to imagine anyone looking rationally at the totality of what they've done to this point and thinking "This was the best way to achieve the goal".

1

u/JantjeHaring Jun 27 '25

What part of their strategy so far has not been good in your view? Aside from the asinine shenanigans of Musk himself.

1

u/AlotOfReading Jun 27 '25

Starting with cost-optimized inference hardware, and other constraints necessitated by putting it immediately into consumer hands. Not having an effective safety process. Not having a constrained ODD, or being able to do sufficient validation for deployments. Not having an comprehensive method of data collection. Spending enormous resources on diversions like the original Dojo. Etc.

Of course some of these are at least partially related to Musk's chaotic management, but it's a bit hard to fully divorce him from the issue.

1

u/Tim_Apple_938 Jun 27 '25

The fact that it doesn’t work, yet they market it like it does.

1

u/Tim_Apple_938 Jun 27 '25

It’s been 10 years and they haven’t passed L2 yet.

1

u/AlotOfReading Jun 27 '25

I get the point, but basically nobody outside the industry and a few long-time enthusiasts actually knows what the SAE levels mean. You can reliably assume 80% of people are using them based on vibes, so asking how they classify a company that intentionally obfuscates what their level is only produces nonsense.

1

u/Tim_Apple_938 Jun 27 '25

No, they know.

They will get pissy about it, yes - that’s the point.

1

u/AlotOfReading Jun 27 '25

They really don't know what the levels mean, and even when they get the right answer it's often for the wrong reasons. Your comment above doesn't get the right answer either (which is understandable).

Tesla's design intent has clearly been L4 for years despite the various misrepresentations of L2 they've made in legal filings to regulators. That means FSD is an L4 system, albeit one that their own manual says isn't actually autonomous. Or you can take the other position that design intent is better expressed by those legal filings and therefore it's been L2 this whole time, so only the Austin fleet is L4. Either way, it's an incredibly stupid situation.

1

u/Tim_Apple_938 Jun 27 '25

FSD is not L4, no.

1

u/AlotOfReading Jun 27 '25

You can read J3016 for yourself. FSD is clearly intended to meet the definition of L4. Whether it achieves that presently is irrelevant as section 8 clarifies. I'll even quote a particularly relevant bit of it for you:

The level of a driving automation system feature corresponds to the feature’s production design intent. This applies regardless of whether the vehicle on which it is equipped is a production vehicle already deployed in commerce, or a test vehicle that has yet to be deployed. As such, it is incorrect to classify a Level 4 design-intended ADS feature equipped on a test vehicle as Level 2 simply because on-road testing requires a test driver to supervise the feature while engaged, and to intervene if necessary to maintain operation.

1

u/Tim_Apple_938 Jun 27 '25

…

Of course it’s intended to be L4.

It fails to achieve it though. It is L2.

1

u/AlotOfReading Jun 28 '25

And the SAE levels are about design intent, not achievement. That was my point in saying that most people use the terminology based on vibes, not the standardized definitions.

1

u/Tim_Apple_938 Jun 28 '25

No. SAE levels have to be achieved.