adamjcook

There will be significant differences in demands made by the end users of a web browser and a viable CAD system for serious work though.

It is an extremely tough market that many have been shaken out of.

Reliability is a must, particularly on the data representation and exchange front. And those assurances carry ENORMOUS costs. Big money at immediate risk in downstream, physical product if that goes south at any time - spread across multiple manufacturers and other product lifecycle parties.

Lots of workstation compatibility certification work done on CAD kernels.

PLM alone, embedded in many engineering organizations, is a very sticky element for retaining a certain CAD program and certain kernels internally - and it is my understanding that PLM is where the major money is made (not so much on the per seat CAD licensing costs).

New grads are coming out from college today after using CAD company-supplied software in much of their classwork for 4 years.

Many CNC controllers use Parasolid internally for certain visualization and programming operations - machines that will be working on the floor for decades from today.

The fact is that the per seat licensing cost and lock-in tradeoff is simply not a serious issue for many - and such costs have become arguably marginal for even small design houses and manufacturers.

> If you think it's a black box to the Tesla drivers, how is it not a black box to the Waymo customers in the back seat of these cars?

The general public (as a vehicle occupant) only interacts with a Waymo vehicle as a passenger with no vehicle control responsibilities.

That is in stark contrast from the integral human-machine relationship that exists in a Tesla vehicle.

> If you mean to the teams, you cannot assume that Waymo's systems are any less of a black box than Tesla's systems.

True.

Waymo's internal processes are a Black Box to me (and anyone external to Waymo) because we are not read into their systems safety lifecycle, whatever it may be.

Hopefully and presumably, Waymo is maintaining a Safety Management System (SMS) with their test operators and other internal teams, as they have claimed in the past.

Of course, since there is little-to-no regulatory oversight of this in the US (at the moment, perhaps)... Waymo's "word" is really the only thing the public has to go by.

That is not acceptable, in my view, in constructing a novel transportation system that ultimately relies on public trust to be economically viable... but that is the regulatory reality right now.

In the case of Tesla, it is definitive that they are not maintaining a SMS, in large part, because Tesla's (untrained) customers utilizing the system cannot be sufficiently read into a lifecycle. There is simply no way to do that without maintaining a highly-controlled, continuous relationship with the test operator.

For example, the "release notes" (sprinkled with some Tweets from Musk) that Tesla issues with some of the FSD Beta updates are simply too puny relative to the complexity of not only the vehicle system, but the larger complexity of the roadway.

> And even then, they're not much of a black box at all, besides the actual object detection, as both Waymo and Tesla still have most decision-making in regular logic-based code, not machine learning algorithms; and when they do, such as with "do I need to get over now to make the next turn", it's still fed back into the "business logic" that decides what to do and thus logged and audited when it's sent back to HQ.

As I stated elsewhere, these are physical safety-critical systems where the totality of the systems safety components cannot be expressed in software alone.

Remote vehicle telemetry is valuable of course, but as a tool to serve the validation process... not the validation process itself.

Vehicle telemetry cannot be a complete accounting of all of the interacting systems safety components involved here.

For that, like all other safety-critical systems, one needs exhaustive, controlled and physical validation.

In my view, the higher-level issues with the FSD Beta program are:

- A failure by Tesla to view the system that they are developing as what it really is - a physical safety-critical system and not "an AI". Those two are distinct systems as, with a physical safety-critical systems, the totality of the systems safety components cannot be fully expressed in software - neither initially nor continuously.

- To build on that point, Tesla is not allowing the Operational Design Domain (ODD) via a robust, well-maintained validation process determine the vehicle hardware as the ODD demands it to be. Instead, Tesla is trying to "front run" it (ignore the demands of the ODD) by largely focusing on hardware costs. The tension from failing to recognize that is why Tesla, in part, has a long history of being forced to (somewhat clandestinely) change the relevant sensor and compute hardware on their vehicles while promising to "solve FSD" (whatever that means) by the end of every year since around 2015 or so.

That "comparison YouTube video" is absurd and dangerous, because, at minimum...

A Level 4-capable vehicle (a Waymo vehicle) is an incomparably different system than a Level 2-capable vehicle (a vehicle equipped with FSD Beta).

The Waymo vehicle has a design intent such that there is no human driver fallback requirement within their vehicle's Operational Design Domain (ODD).

The Tesla vehicle has a de facto design intent such that the human driver is the fallback at all times - which makes the control relationship between the human driver and the automated system exactly the same as if the Tesla vehicle was equipped with no automation at all.

The risk profiles and failure mode analyses are Night and Day different and, therefore, the validation traits between these two vehicle are Night and Day different.

But, more than that, there are no guarantees that:

- The human driver of the FSD Beta-active vehicle shown in that video did not manipulate any of the vehicle controls out-of-view that clandestinely assisted the vehicle without deactivating the automated system (possible and inherent Human Factors safety issues with that aside); and

- The creators of this comparison video did not select the most visually-performant run out of several attempts.

Naturally, since we are dealing with safety-critical systems here, assumptions of "positive safety" are not compatible with any internal or external analysis.

Lastly, I have yet to see a video involving FSD Beta where indirect and "unseen" systems safety issues were satisfied. Appearances can be deceiving and deadly with safety-critical systems.

In my book, Tesla gets a bad rap for providing an unvalidated, should-be safety-critical system to run-of-the-mill consumers without an accompanying Safety Management System.

The fact that they profit handsomely off this structurally dangerous wrongdoing is just the cherry on top.

And, without robustly maintaining a systems safety lifecycle (which, by necessity, must incorporate a Safety Management System)... no technical progress is quantifiable by anyone, including Tesla.

Tesla effectively throws a system over-the-wall and throws it all on the human driver and on the public.

> According to Moravy, vehicle assembly processes haven’t changed in the last 100 years, which he says is “really silly.

Where to start with this article?

Here is a good spot I guess.

First off, Moravy is wrong.

If anyone thinks that auto manufacturing and the "vehicle assembly process" has not substantially changed in the last 100 years, then they are totally ignorant of the industry and of the exacting details associated with something as complex as automotive manufacturing.

The other vital thing that this article fails to mention at all is how manufacturing is shaped by the larger concerns of the product lifecycle - which is (or should be) the actual "product" that leaves the factory.

"The car" is just a hunk of metal that embodies the product lifecycle - which can be competitively unique from manufacturer-to-manufacturer.

One cannot talk myopically about "costs" and whatever happens on the manufacturing floor without bringing in the total concerns of the product lifecycle (i.e. service, end-of-life, market requirements).

That is difficult to do in an article because the total size and complexity of each automaker's product lifecycle is immense (and largely unknown externally from the automaker in question), but it must be done.

> If something goes wrong in final assembly, you block the whole line and you end up with buffering in between.”

Which is how, fundamentally or in part fundamentally, the Toyota Production System works - and it is difficult to argue with the quality results at Toyota.

Honestly, I am not seeing much of a difference here overall.

There are various component assembly lines that do run outside and "in parallel" with the General Assembly lines at incumbent automakers.

I am not even sure how this is debatable.

> “However, there are some quality-related risks involved, such as potential gaps in fit and finish,” warns Pischalnikov. (snip) “The reason that’s always been done is for color consistency, to ensure that there’s a perfect match between the doors and the rest of the car body,” Prasad points out. “By not having to assemble, disassemble and reassemble vehicles, you can reduce production costs and eliminate waste.

Which are quality control aspects that Tesla still seemingly struggles with, near as I can tell.

I am all for encouraging automakers to explore new methods of automotive manufacturing and BEV production will present significant opportunities to do so, but this article from Assembly Magazine is, at the very least, incomplete.

I am tired of Tesla lying about its vehicles being capable of "driving themselves" and selling a "Full Self-Driving" product that is anything but - preying on the public's ignorance and substantially harming public safety.

I am dog tired of that.

No, other automakers are definitely not saints... but Tesla has embraced uniquely extreme wrongdoings throughout its history and this Handelsblatt story (which is still coming out in stages) fits Tesla like a glove.

Hmm. Perhaps I should have read the parent's comment more carefully. I think that I might have misinterpreted it.

You (and the parent comment) are correct.

My comment was not intended to argue that a recall prescribed a particular corrective action.

I agree.

> The OTA updates do provide an avenue to make cars much safer by reducing the friction for these type of safety fixes.

True, but let us also acknowledge the immense systems safety downsides of OTA updates given the lack of effective automotive regulation in the US (and to varying degrees globally).

OTA updates can also be utilized to hide safety-critical system defects that did exist on a fleet for a time.

Also, the availability of OTA update machinery might cause internal validation processes to be watered down (for cost and time-to-market reasons) because there is an understanding that defects can always be fixed relatively seamlessly after the vehicle has been delivered.

These are serious issues and are entirely flying under the radar.

And this is why US automotive regulators need to start robustly scrutinizing internal processes at automakers, instead of arbitrary endpoints.

The US automotive regulatory system largely revolves around an "Honor Code" with automakers - and that is clearly problematic when dealing with opaque, "software-defined" vehicles that leave no physical evidence of a prior defect that may have caused death or injury in some impacted vehicles before an OTA update was pushed to the fleet.

EDIT: Fixed some minor spelling/word selection errors.

It is the terminology that exists in US automotive regulations (what little there effectively are).

A "recall" is just a public record that a safety-related defect existed, the products impacted and what the manufacturer performed in terms of a corrective action.

Additionally, I believe that the possibility exists that Tesla must update the vehicle software at a service center due to configuration issues. Only a small number of vehicles may require that type of corrective action, but the possibility exists.

Historically, there exist product recalls (especially outside of the automotive domain) where the product in question does not have to be returned (replacement parts are shipped to the impacted customers, for example).