My latest post got me thinking about self-driving cars and so I thought I'd ask the community if you'd ever consider using one and/or purchasing one.
What do you think of Teslas in particular? My understanding is that they're currently the closest to being able to sell a completely autonomous personal vehicle.
Jump to Post— rproffitt 3,249Tesla fails to FSD from home to the local car wash every single time.
Other failures occur when the Sun rises or sets and blinds FSD.Would not buy FSD. I do however use the free demonstration periods when they are offered.
- This is IMO because of that decision …
Jump to Post— Reverend Jim 6,665Classic?
I'm sure you wouldn't like to go back to when cars had a manual choke. And I certainly don't miss frost shields. My mother once had a car that had a floor mounted stick shift, and while it had an electric starter, you could in a pinch start it …
Jump to Post— Reverend Jim 6,665And at what point did "self" stop meaning you did it yourself? Self-serve means you serve yourself. Self-help means you help yourself. Self-reliant means you rely on yourself. My self-driving car means I drive it myself.
Self - noun - A person's essential being that distinguishes them from others, especially …
Jump to Post— trcooke 253Also, where I live in Ireland many of the roads I drive on don't exactly have a clearly defined boundary especially on the kerb side. I wonder how a "self driving" car would get on with that? For example, here's a road I drive quite regularly.
Jump to Post— Salem 6,009Why not a monthly charge based on how far or how often you drive?
There already is - it's called petrol / diesel / electricity. The more you drive, the more you spend.
Tesla fails to FSD from home to the local car wash every single time.
Other failures occur when the Sun rises or sets and blinds FSD.
Would not buy FSD. I do however use the free demonstration periods when they are offered.
There's always another edge case.
Wait a minute. If I’m understanding you correctly, you have a Tesla, despite insisting that I boycott everything Elon?
Tesla's are an overpriced toy with a tarnished image - but that's just my biased opinion.
That said, I like the idea and agree with these sentiments.
Veritasium - https://youtu.be/yjztvddhZmI?si=8cu1_B-blT9rhcbQ
CGP Grey - https://youtu.be/7Pq-S557XQU?si=tLOk-mzJs7iCtky7&t=298
However, people get stupid at a quicker rate that cars get smarter.
https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a62919131/tesla-has-highest-fatal-accident-rate-of-all-auto-brands-study/
All these "driver assist" technologies make for some pretty awful drivers.
It's just ... since I became ill and don't feel safe driving anymore (because of my constant brain fog and extreme drowsiness), what's a gal (who wants to have some semblance of independence) to do?
As a fella who learned to drive in the mid 90s, back when cars were mere tools that did what you asked it to do (for good for for bad). I have mixed feelings about modern cars. On the one hand engine development has come a very long way and dang most cars are suuuper smooth these days, but on the other hand cars have gotten so darned opinionated about things, too much so for my tastes.
I drive a 2016 Audi A4. It's by a long way the smoothest car I've ever owned and really really comfortable, but it has opinions. If I get too close to anything it complains about it, even if there's no impending danger, it has no notion of context. But it turns out my car is pretty chilled compared to some. We were in France a few weeks ago and we hired a Citroën C5 and my goodness that thing complained non stop about absolutely everything. I'm going too fast, I'm too close to the white line, I'm too close to almost any other vehicle or road furniture, and the time I opened the door while parking to see if I was in the line for the parking space the thing went crazy with alarms and took the car out of gear and into park.
No thank you.
For my next car I'd like a "Classic" version with all the comforts and none of the opinions.
Classic?
I'm sure you wouldn't like to go back to when cars had a manual choke. And I certainly don't miss frost shields. My mother once had a car that had a floor mounted stick shift, and while it had an electric starter, you could in a pinch start it with a crank. Never had to use it because the way to start it with a dead battery was to open the driver side door, put it in neutral, push it from the outside, then hop in, put it in gear and pop the clutch.
I miss a stick shift.
And at what point did "self" stop meaning you did it yourself? Self-serve means you serve yourself. Self-help means you help yourself. Self-reliant means you rely on yourself. My self-driving car means I drive it myself.
Self - noun - A person's essential being that distinguishes them from others, especially considered as the object of introspection or reflexive action.
Inanimate objects cannot have the property of "self".
I draw a distinction between automated and opinionated. Auto choke is automation to do a thing that must be done anyway, right? The engine is cold so the mixture needs to be richer, ok the engine can figure that out itself, happy days. I'm skidding and I very likely don't want to be skidding, ABS yes please. It's icy and getting grip is hard work, traction control yes please.
But opinions: Telling me I'm speeding when it's failed to determine the correct speed limit so has defaulted to crawl speed? No thanks. Not allowing me to drive at all with the door open? No thanks. Taking over the steering because I'm attempting to move lanes without indicating, no thanks. Every alarm going off because I'm deliberately trying to park within a couple of inches of a wall/post/another car, no thanks.
I still have manual choke on my motorbike, but that thing also has a carburetor so not exactly at the peak of technical development. It's 20 years old though.
Here in the UK "stick shift", or manual as we call it, is the normal. I'd say most cars on the road are manuals although autos are certainly becoming more popular as they've gotten better in recent years/decades. My car is a manual.
Also, where I live in Ireland many of the roads I drive on don't exactly have a clearly defined boundary especially on the kerb side. I wonder how a "self driving" car would get on with that? For example, here's a road I drive quite regularly.
That picture sold me. I want to live there. My maternal grandmother was from Ballymena. I'd love to go see it but I really don't like to travel any more. Perhaps it's time to strap on the Oculus with the Wander app and take a stroll around the country lanes.
It's a nice place to live. I live in Bangor, Co Down, and Ballymena is about an hours drive away.
FSD Part Deux:
This on top of the other failures that meant it is far and away from being autonomous.
There are videos of BYD EVs with better FSD but the current US regime has banned those vehicles.
-> Shop other FSD systems since the one from TSLA has a huge inherrent flaw.
My husband also drives an Audi A4. I forget when he got it, but probably around 2018-2019 or so if I had to guess. It, too, has this massive problem where it just randomly thinks that it's about to hit something, and slams on the breaks out of nowhere. Every time has been without warning and without coming anywhere close to hitting something. I nearly got whiplash a few times!
My 2013 BMW 330xi also has similar safety features, but I've had the pleasure of never having to experience them. IMHO it seems to be an Audi problem.
Self driving car trivia: In the movie, Total Recall (the good one) the self-driving Johnny Cab driver was modeled after, and voiced by Robert Picardo (the doctor from Start Trek Voyager)
I would have appreciated that a lot more if I had realized, because I watched Total Recall at around the same time as Voyager introduced me to being a Trekkie. Although, TBH, I've only really gotten into Voyager, then TNG, and then Picard. I didn't much care for DS9, and I gave Enterprise a shot but I just couldn't seem to look at the captain without waiting for his next leap.
I know how you feel. I watched Enterprise the same way. Loved the Dean Stockwell cameo. Hated the finale.
It, too, has this massive problem where it just randomly thinks that it's about to hit something, and slams on the breaks out of nowhere
Oh wow yours too! Mine does that occasionally. I think the front sensors see ghosts or something. The only recurring scenario I've remembered is when the road climbs sharply or you reach the bottom of a dip in the road, and I think the front sensors see the road a little higher than usual and interprets that as something else. It's very disturbing, ABS applied and "ping ping ping", if there really was something that required avoiding you'd be very distracted trying to do so. "Audi Pre-sense" I think that feature is called.
With all the tech in cars these days, how long before we end up with cars as a service? BMW charged a monthly fee if you wanted to use the seat-warming feature. I understand the justification for certain monthly fees for features such as active traffic updates, satellite radio, etc. But charging a monthly fee for a feature that does not require any external connectivity is simply a money grab. Unfortunately, once the genie is out of the bottle there is no putting it back. It would be too easy for car companies to repeatedly charge for just about anything. Why not a monthly charge based on how far or how often you drive?
Not a car company, but Comcast settled a class action lawsuit after charging customers a monthly "service protection" fee that turned out to be the following:
Why not a monthly charge based on how far or how often you drive?
There already is - it's called petrol / diesel / electricity. The more you drive, the more you spend.
I remember that seat warming subscription fiasco. I found it absurd at the time, and if I remember correctly, there was so much backlash that BMW reversed course.
There already is - it's called petrol / diesel / electricity. The more you drive, the more you spend.
But that money goes into the pockets of oil companies, not car manufacturers.
With last year's electric bill total of just over 22 USD and 3 EVs, we do our bit to curb the cash flow to oligarchs.
I'm new to solar (June was my first true-up bill) and I totally don't understand it.
It says:
Total NEM Charges Before Taxes: -$714.26
Total State Mandated Non-Bypassable Charges: $226.03
Total Electric Minimum Delivery Charges: -$128.69
Total NEM Charges: $97.34Does that mean that our true-up is $97.34 while yours was only $22? Does the negative 700 just vanish into thin air?
NEM 2.0 can be difficult to compute. The non-bypassable charges vary with the supplier (SDGE, PGE, etc) so for us it's low because we shift use away from peak TOU periods. TOU is Time Of Use.
On top of that I deployed solar generators that either have their own balcony solar panel or on a timer to disconnect from the grid during the highest TOU periods.
Big nod to the Growatt 3.6 kWh for it having the timer built in. The others I had to get a few wall timers.
Under 100 for the entire year is great. For the amount of effort, time and money I invested to get it down to 22 bucks last year, few would do that. The only reason I do is because I can and I love to experiment and learn more about these systems.
I put absolutely no time or effort into it, and I use electricity willy nilly. We unfortunately do pay a lot in gas to heat the pool, but I use it year-round and get a lot of enjoyment out of it, and an electric heat pump wouldn't be able to heat the pool to the same temperature as our gas spa heater. We did swap out a gas stove for induction when we renovated the kitchen last year.
Dishes, laundry, and cooking typically get done at peak TOU because, with my health being so poor, much of the household errands have unfortunately fallen on my husband when he gets home from work. However, starting this Friday, I've hired a full-time home care worker to help me out to take the burden off of my husband, while also making my days more fulfilling, and so she'll be able to do much of the household chores during the daytime.
With an electric bill at $96.34 for the year
That's not the entire electric bill, though. I believe every month there's a charge of $6 and change for a line item called distribution, or something like that.
I had to fetch the entire year to do the math.
Sorry, I’m not following. Doesn’t your true-up bill state the total amount?
A fascinating query! I'd give a self-driving car a try, but complete faith? Not just yet. Although I think true autonomy is still a ways off from being completely dependable, Teslas are impressive.
SDGE billing shows "something" but not the total for the year. Had to go get all the data.
Ah. I have PG&E. I miss living in Palo Alto where the city had its own utility company. When the rest of the SF Bay Area had a blackout due to a bad forest fire a bunch of years ago, Palo Alto still had lights.
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