Podcast: Play in new window
Once we decided it was time for lunch, Chuck Cook tapped the digital display on the dashboard of his Tesla Model Y and told the automobile to drive us to the Bearded Pig, a barbecue joint on the opposite side of town.
“I don’t know the way it’s gonna do. But I believe it’s gonna do pretty good,” he said with the folksy, infectious enthusiasm he delivered to nearly every moment of our daylong tour of Jacksonville, Fla., in a automobile that might drive itself.
That is Chuck.
That is Chuck’s Tesla.
That is Cade.
For greater than two years, Tesla has been testing a technology it calls Full Self-Driving with Mr. Cook, a 53-year-old airline pilot and amateur beekeeper, and a limited variety of automobile owners across the country.
Tesla has long offered a driver-assistance system called Autopilot, which might steer, brake and speed up its cars on highways. But Full Self-Driving is something different. It’s an effort to increase this sort of technology beyond highways and onto city streets.
This summer, Elon Musk, the corporate’s chief executive, said the system could be available in greater than one million cars by the top of the yr. In August, we spent a day driving around with Mr. Cook and his Tesla to evaluate the progress of this experimental technology.
Over six hours, his automobile navigated highways, exit ramps, city streets, roundabouts, bridges and parking lots. Along with his hands near or on the wheel and his eyes on the road, the automobile attempted greater than 40 unprotected left-hand turns against oncoming traffic. It kept us on the sting of our seats.
All of the while, video cameras recorded every little thing we experienced, including a GoPro mounted on the roof in addition to the eight cameras installed by Tesla on the front, back and sides of the automobile.
The Trip to the Bearded Pig
Essentially the most telling moment got here because the automobile drove us to lunch. After navigating heavy traffic on a four-lane road, taking an unexpected turn and quickly remapping its path to the restaurant, the automobile took a right turn onto a brief street beside a small motel.
Cade:Did you intervene with a turn signal?
Chuck:No, no.
Chuck:I’m not doing anything.
Chuck:It’ll must remap though.
Chuck:I’m doing every little thing I can to have this take us to lunch.
But watch because the Tesla struggles to make sense of its environment, veering from the road right into a motel car parking zone. Chuck is forced to retake control.
Cade:Whoa!
Cade:What’s this?
Chuck:I don’t know.
Cade:Whoa!
After driving across the motel, the automobile almost immediately made the identical mistake, jerking into the lot this time.
Chuck:I don’t know why it did that.
Chuck:So we had one disengagement and a reroute right into a …
Cade: Whoa!
Chuck:So let’s see what it’s doing here.
From a unique angle, it was sobering to see how close we got here to hitting a parked automobile after we rolled over a low curb separating the car parking zone.
Cade:Whoa!
Cade:What’s this?
Chuck:I don’t know.
Cade:Whoa!
Even the automobile’s internal display, which uses red lines to indicate boundaries that the pc vision system detects, suggests that the automobile struggled to differentiate the curb between the road and the lot.
Cade:Whoa!
Chuck:So let’s see what it’s doing here.
Tesla is consistently modifying the technology, working to repair its shortcomings. Because the day we drove around Jacksonville, the corporate has twice released recent versions of the technology that show signs of improvement. However the moment within the motel car parking zone showed why it could be a protracted time before cars can safely drive anywhere on their very own.
The experiences of beta testers like Mr. Cook are a window into the enormously ambitious and expensive bet that Tesla is making on self-driving technology. It and other firms are investing billions into researching and developing autonomous vehicles — taxis that may ferry us around town, trucks that may deliver our online orders and possibly even sooner or later cars that may take our kids to soccer practice.
Elon Musk and Tesla didn’t reply to requests to take part in this story. But Mr. Cook’s Model Y provides a glimpse of the long run we’re moving toward, which can prove to be safer, more reliable and fewer stressful — but remains to be years away from reality.
Tesla’s technology can work remarkably well. It changes lanes by itself, recognizes green lights, and is in a position to make abnormal turns against oncoming traffic.
Chuck:This is gorgeous.
Chuck:I like this when it happens.
Chuck:It’s similar to…
Chuck:Slows, sees, turns.
Chuck:It’s so different without traffic interaction, right?
Cade:Sure
Chuck:It’s just so confident when it knows.
Chuck:This is gorgeous.
Chuck:I like this when it happens.
Chuck:It’s similar to…
Chuck:Slows, sees, turns.
Chuck:It’s so different without traffic interaction, right?
Cade:Sure
Chuck:It’s just so confident when it knows.
Chuck:This is gorgeous.
Chuck:I like this when it happens.
Chuck:It’s similar to…
Chuck:Slows, sees, turns.
Chuck:It’s so different without traffic interaction, right?
Cade:Sure
Chuck:It’s just so confident when it knows.
But sometimes, it makes a mistake, forcing testers like Chuck to intervene.
“That moment shows that the automobile can only know what it’s trained to know,” Mr. Cook said of the sudden turn into the car parking zone. “The world is an enormous place, and there are various corner cases that Tesla may not have trained it for.”
Experts say no system could possibly have the sophistication needed to handle every possible scenario on any road. This is able to require technology that mimics human reasoning — technology that we humans don’t yet know how you can construct.
Such technology, called artificial general intelligence, “remains to be very, very distant,” said Andrew Clare, chief technology officer of the self-driving vehicle company Nuro. “It will not be something you or I or our children needs to be banking on to assist them get around in cars.”
‘Chuck’s Turn’
Chuck Cook beside his Tesla.
Ian Clontz for The Latest York Times
Within the tight-knit community of Tesla enthusiasts, stockholders, bloggers and social media mavens, Chuck Cook is known. This summer, Mr. Musk noticed the meticulous way he explored the boundaries of the technology in a series of YouTube videos.
Mr. Cook had been posting online clips of his Tesla attempting to navigate an unprotected left turn near his home in Jacksonville. (Mr. Cook uses money from YouTube ads and donations from viewers to pay for cameras and other equipment.) To make this turn, the automobile must go through three lanes of traffic approaching from the left, squeeze through a spot within the median and merge into three more lanes of traffic approaching from the correct.
Sometimes, the automobile made the turn with aplomb, edging into the thoroughfare and waiting for a moment when it could speed right into a far lane.
Other times, it got stuck beside the median in the course of the turn — its rear bumper jutting into the oncoming traffic:
Aerial imagery by Chuck Cook
Soon, Mr. Musk noticed the videos and vowed to unravel what Tesla enthusiasts began calling “Chuck’s turn.” Within the weeks that followed, Tesla equipped several test cars with a new edition of its self-driving technology and sent them to Mr. Cook’s neighborhood, where they spent several weeks testing the brand new software and gathering data that might help improve it.
Mr. Cook and I spent a superb chunk of our day asking his automobile to navigate the turn named after him. Each attempt was different from the last. Sometimes, the cars approached much faster from the left. Other times, from the correct. Sometimes, the gap between the 2 was enormous. Other times, it was tiny.
Not long after that day in Jacksonville, Tesla released a new edition of its software to Mr. Cook and other beta testers.
The automobile’s display now showed a blue overlay that indicated what was a secure zone within the median.
Before the software update
After the software update
When facing heavy traffic, it could navigate Chuck’s turn with a precision that was impossible previously. So if it needed to stop next to the median, it might position itself in order that traffic could safely pass each in front and behind.
Aerial imagery by Chuck Cook
Chuck’s turn is only one scenario among the many countless scenarios a Tesla might face on American roadways.
Some are relatively common. Corporations like Tesla can test and retest their technologies in these situations until they’re confident a automobile can handle them safely. But other scenarios are rare and unexpected — what industry experts call “edge cases.”
“It is vitally easy to unravel the primary 90 percent of the issue, very hard to unravel the last 10 percent,” Mr. Clare said, referring to the decades-long effort to create self-driving cars. “You want to have the option to handle those edge cases gracefully.”
Facing the unexpected
After lunch, when Mr. Cook told the automobile to drive us to a small neighborhood park near the river, the skies were overcast and the streets were wet from summer rain.
Guided by Tesla’s self-driving technology, the automobile drove along the river and over a bridge before reaching an intersection lined with trees. Then it turned left toward an unmarked road that ran between several giant oaks draped in Spanish moss.
Because the automobile approached the shadows beneath this mossy cover, it suddenly modified course, turned sharply right and headed the fallacious way down a one-way street:
Chuck:Let’s see what it does here.
Chuck:Traffic there.
Chuck:Took the correct of way.
Cade:Whoa, whoa, whoa!
Chuck:It didn’t find it.
Chuck:Let’s see what it does here.
Chuck:Traffic there.
Chuck:Took the correct of way.
Cade:Whoa, whoa, whoa!
Chuck:It didn’t find it.
Chuck:Let’s see what it does here.
Chuck:Traffic there.
Chuck:Took the correct of way.
Cade:Whoa, whoa, whoa!
Chuck:It didn’t find it.
The moment highlighted the difference between Tesla’s self-driving technology and “robotaxi” services being developed by firms like Waymo, owned by the identical parent company as Google, and Cruise, backed by General Motors.
The robotaxi firms try to cut back these unexpected moments by tightly controlling where and the way a automobile can drive. Using laser sensors called lidar, they construct three dimensional digital maps of individual neighborhoods that give cars a advantageous grained understanding of their environment. Then they spend months and even years testing cars in these contained areas.
These firms at the moment are preparing self-driving automobile services that may operate without backup drivers in places like San Francisco and Austin, Texas. But these services could have strict limitations that make the duty easier. The cars will travel only in certain neighborhoods under certain weather conditions at relatively low speeds. And company technicians will provide distant assistance to cars that inevitably find themselves in situations they can’t navigate on their very own.
Tesla will not be operating in this manner. Lidar sensors are too expensive for many consumer vehicles. Constructing three-dimensional maps and testing vehicles on every American roadway is impractical. So is distant assistance. Because of this Tesla cars face the unexpected more often than Waymo or Cruise cars — and that testers like Chuck Cook must keep their hands on the wheel in any respect times.
Just last week, he and his automobile revisited a number of of the scenarios we encountered in August. Sometimes, the automobile performed perfectly. Sometimes, it didn’t. It drove past the motel on the technique to the Bearded Pig six times, and though it remained on the road thrice, it mistakenly drove into the car parking zone thrice as well.
When it did veer into the car parking zone, it didn’t swerve as egregiously because it did in August. Mr. Cook says he’s impressed with the progress of the technology. But he also knows that way more progress is required. He also knows that Tesla engineers are focused on the behavior of his automobile and that others may not perform as well in situations which have not been closely scrutinized.
“The technology will not be able to take the motive force out of the seat,” Mr. Cook told me on a recent morning. “As they proceed to iterate on the hardware and the software, it’s a like a salmon going up river.”
After releasing the brand new beta, Mr. Musk softened his claims concerning the immediate way forward for the technology. He now says that the technology is not going to be widely available until next yr — and that regulators are unlikely to approve it to be used without hands on the wheel. Autopilot still requires this oversight.
Federal regulators have spent the past several months investigating a series of crashes involving Autopilot, and so they haven’t yet revealed the outcomes. Safety experts worry that the arrival of Full Self-Driving will result in more accidents.
“It’s inevitable,” said Jake Fisher, senior director of Consumer Reports’ Auto Test Center, who has used the technology. “The issue comes as this technique gets higher and folks get complacent. It’ll still do the unexpected.”
Podcast: Play in new window
Once we decided it was time for lunch, Chuck Cook tapped the digital display on the dashboard of his Tesla Model Y and told the automobile to drive us to the Bearded Pig, a barbecue joint on the opposite side of town.
“I don’t know the way it’s gonna do. But I believe it’s gonna do pretty good,” he said with the folksy, infectious enthusiasm he delivered to nearly every moment of our daylong tour of Jacksonville, Fla., in a automobile that might drive itself.
That is Chuck.
That is Chuck’s Tesla.
That is Cade.
For greater than two years, Tesla has been testing a technology it calls Full Self-Driving with Mr. Cook, a 53-year-old airline pilot and amateur beekeeper, and a limited variety of automobile owners across the country.
Tesla has long offered a driver-assistance system called Autopilot, which might steer, brake and speed up its cars on highways. But Full Self-Driving is something different. It’s an effort to increase this sort of technology beyond highways and onto city streets.
This summer, Elon Musk, the corporate’s chief executive, said the system could be available in greater than one million cars by the top of the yr. In August, we spent a day driving around with Mr. Cook and his Tesla to evaluate the progress of this experimental technology.
Over six hours, his automobile navigated highways, exit ramps, city streets, roundabouts, bridges and parking lots. Along with his hands near or on the wheel and his eyes on the road, the automobile attempted greater than 40 unprotected left-hand turns against oncoming traffic. It kept us on the sting of our seats.
All of the while, video cameras recorded every little thing we experienced, including a GoPro mounted on the roof in addition to the eight cameras installed by Tesla on the front, back and sides of the automobile.
The Trip to the Bearded Pig
Essentially the most telling moment got here because the automobile drove us to lunch. After navigating heavy traffic on a four-lane road, taking an unexpected turn and quickly remapping its path to the restaurant, the automobile took a right turn onto a brief street beside a small motel.
Cade:Did you intervene with a turn signal?
Chuck:No, no.
Chuck:I’m not doing anything.
Chuck:It’ll must remap though.
Chuck:I’m doing every little thing I can to have this take us to lunch.
But watch because the Tesla struggles to make sense of its environment, veering from the road right into a motel car parking zone. Chuck is forced to retake control.
Cade:Whoa!
Cade:What’s this?
Chuck:I don’t know.
Cade:Whoa!
After driving across the motel, the automobile almost immediately made the identical mistake, jerking into the lot this time.
Chuck:I don’t know why it did that.
Chuck:So we had one disengagement and a reroute right into a …
Cade: Whoa!
Chuck:So let’s see what it’s doing here.
From a unique angle, it was sobering to see how close we got here to hitting a parked automobile after we rolled over a low curb separating the car parking zone.
Cade:Whoa!
Cade:What’s this?
Chuck:I don’t know.
Cade:Whoa!
Even the automobile’s internal display, which uses red lines to indicate boundaries that the pc vision system detects, suggests that the automobile struggled to differentiate the curb between the road and the lot.
Cade:Whoa!
Chuck:So let’s see what it’s doing here.
Tesla is consistently modifying the technology, working to repair its shortcomings. Because the day we drove around Jacksonville, the corporate has twice released recent versions of the technology that show signs of improvement. However the moment within the motel car parking zone showed why it could be a protracted time before cars can safely drive anywhere on their very own.
The experiences of beta testers like Mr. Cook are a window into the enormously ambitious and expensive bet that Tesla is making on self-driving technology. It and other firms are investing billions into researching and developing autonomous vehicles — taxis that may ferry us around town, trucks that may deliver our online orders and possibly even sooner or later cars that may take our kids to soccer practice.
Elon Musk and Tesla didn’t reply to requests to take part in this story. But Mr. Cook’s Model Y provides a glimpse of the long run we’re moving toward, which can prove to be safer, more reliable and fewer stressful — but remains to be years away from reality.
Tesla’s technology can work remarkably well. It changes lanes by itself, recognizes green lights, and is in a position to make abnormal turns against oncoming traffic.
Chuck:This is gorgeous.
Chuck:I like this when it happens.
Chuck:It’s similar to…
Chuck:Slows, sees, turns.
Chuck:It’s so different without traffic interaction, right?
Cade:Sure
Chuck:It’s just so confident when it knows.
Chuck:This is gorgeous.
Chuck:I like this when it happens.
Chuck:It’s similar to…
Chuck:Slows, sees, turns.
Chuck:It’s so different without traffic interaction, right?
Cade:Sure
Chuck:It’s just so confident when it knows.
Chuck:This is gorgeous.
Chuck:I like this when it happens.
Chuck:It’s similar to…
Chuck:Slows, sees, turns.
Chuck:It’s so different without traffic interaction, right?
Cade:Sure
Chuck:It’s just so confident when it knows.
But sometimes, it makes a mistake, forcing testers like Chuck to intervene.
“That moment shows that the automobile can only know what it’s trained to know,” Mr. Cook said of the sudden turn into the car parking zone. “The world is an enormous place, and there are various corner cases that Tesla may not have trained it for.”
Experts say no system could possibly have the sophistication needed to handle every possible scenario on any road. This is able to require technology that mimics human reasoning — technology that we humans don’t yet know how you can construct.
Such technology, called artificial general intelligence, “remains to be very, very distant,” said Andrew Clare, chief technology officer of the self-driving vehicle company Nuro. “It will not be something you or I or our children needs to be banking on to assist them get around in cars.”
‘Chuck’s Turn’
Chuck Cook beside his Tesla.
Ian Clontz for The Latest York Times
Within the tight-knit community of Tesla enthusiasts, stockholders, bloggers and social media mavens, Chuck Cook is known. This summer, Mr. Musk noticed the meticulous way he explored the boundaries of the technology in a series of YouTube videos.
Mr. Cook had been posting online clips of his Tesla attempting to navigate an unprotected left turn near his home in Jacksonville. (Mr. Cook uses money from YouTube ads and donations from viewers to pay for cameras and other equipment.) To make this turn, the automobile must go through three lanes of traffic approaching from the left, squeeze through a spot within the median and merge into three more lanes of traffic approaching from the correct.
Sometimes, the automobile made the turn with aplomb, edging into the thoroughfare and waiting for a moment when it could speed right into a far lane.
Other times, it got stuck beside the median in the course of the turn — its rear bumper jutting into the oncoming traffic:
Aerial imagery by Chuck Cook
Soon, Mr. Musk noticed the videos and vowed to unravel what Tesla enthusiasts began calling “Chuck’s turn.” Within the weeks that followed, Tesla equipped several test cars with a new edition of its self-driving technology and sent them to Mr. Cook’s neighborhood, where they spent several weeks testing the brand new software and gathering data that might help improve it.
Mr. Cook and I spent a superb chunk of our day asking his automobile to navigate the turn named after him. Each attempt was different from the last. Sometimes, the cars approached much faster from the left. Other times, from the correct. Sometimes, the gap between the 2 was enormous. Other times, it was tiny.
Not long after that day in Jacksonville, Tesla released a new edition of its software to Mr. Cook and other beta testers.
The automobile’s display now showed a blue overlay that indicated what was a secure zone within the median.
Before the software update
After the software update
When facing heavy traffic, it could navigate Chuck’s turn with a precision that was impossible previously. So if it needed to stop next to the median, it might position itself in order that traffic could safely pass each in front and behind.
Aerial imagery by Chuck Cook
Chuck’s turn is only one scenario among the many countless scenarios a Tesla might face on American roadways.
Some are relatively common. Corporations like Tesla can test and retest their technologies in these situations until they’re confident a automobile can handle them safely. But other scenarios are rare and unexpected — what industry experts call “edge cases.”
“It is vitally easy to unravel the primary 90 percent of the issue, very hard to unravel the last 10 percent,” Mr. Clare said, referring to the decades-long effort to create self-driving cars. “You want to have the option to handle those edge cases gracefully.”
Facing the unexpected
After lunch, when Mr. Cook told the automobile to drive us to a small neighborhood park near the river, the skies were overcast and the streets were wet from summer rain.
Guided by Tesla’s self-driving technology, the automobile drove along the river and over a bridge before reaching an intersection lined with trees. Then it turned left toward an unmarked road that ran between several giant oaks draped in Spanish moss.
Because the automobile approached the shadows beneath this mossy cover, it suddenly modified course, turned sharply right and headed the fallacious way down a one-way street:
Chuck:Let’s see what it does here.
Chuck:Traffic there.
Chuck:Took the correct of way.
Cade:Whoa, whoa, whoa!
Chuck:It didn’t find it.
Chuck:Let’s see what it does here.
Chuck:Traffic there.
Chuck:Took the correct of way.
Cade:Whoa, whoa, whoa!
Chuck:It didn’t find it.
Chuck:Let’s see what it does here.
Chuck:Traffic there.
Chuck:Took the correct of way.
Cade:Whoa, whoa, whoa!
Chuck:It didn’t find it.
The moment highlighted the difference between Tesla’s self-driving technology and “robotaxi” services being developed by firms like Waymo, owned by the identical parent company as Google, and Cruise, backed by General Motors.
The robotaxi firms try to cut back these unexpected moments by tightly controlling where and the way a automobile can drive. Using laser sensors called lidar, they construct three dimensional digital maps of individual neighborhoods that give cars a advantageous grained understanding of their environment. Then they spend months and even years testing cars in these contained areas.
These firms at the moment are preparing self-driving automobile services that may operate without backup drivers in places like San Francisco and Austin, Texas. But these services could have strict limitations that make the duty easier. The cars will travel only in certain neighborhoods under certain weather conditions at relatively low speeds. And company technicians will provide distant assistance to cars that inevitably find themselves in situations they can’t navigate on their very own.
Tesla will not be operating in this manner. Lidar sensors are too expensive for many consumer vehicles. Constructing three-dimensional maps and testing vehicles on every American roadway is impractical. So is distant assistance. Because of this Tesla cars face the unexpected more often than Waymo or Cruise cars — and that testers like Chuck Cook must keep their hands on the wheel in any respect times.
Just last week, he and his automobile revisited a number of of the scenarios we encountered in August. Sometimes, the automobile performed perfectly. Sometimes, it didn’t. It drove past the motel on the technique to the Bearded Pig six times, and though it remained on the road thrice, it mistakenly drove into the car parking zone thrice as well.
When it did veer into the car parking zone, it didn’t swerve as egregiously because it did in August. Mr. Cook says he’s impressed with the progress of the technology. But he also knows that way more progress is required. He also knows that Tesla engineers are focused on the behavior of his automobile and that others may not perform as well in situations which have not been closely scrutinized.
“The technology will not be able to take the motive force out of the seat,” Mr. Cook told me on a recent morning. “As they proceed to iterate on the hardware and the software, it’s a like a salmon going up river.”
After releasing the brand new beta, Mr. Musk softened his claims concerning the immediate way forward for the technology. He now says that the technology is not going to be widely available until next yr — and that regulators are unlikely to approve it to be used without hands on the wheel. Autopilot still requires this oversight.
Federal regulators have spent the past several months investigating a series of crashes involving Autopilot, and so they haven’t yet revealed the outcomes. Safety experts worry that the arrival of Full Self-Driving will result in more accidents.
“It’s inevitable,” said Jake Fisher, senior director of Consumer Reports’ Auto Test Center, who has used the technology. “The issue comes as this technique gets higher and folks get complacent. It’ll still do the unexpected.”
