I did not know you need to be a tech junkie to understand and confirm the on-screen warning message "You must keep your hands on the steering wheel at all times and take over the driving as needed" when you engage "autopilot".
Cor van de Water Chief Scientist Proxim Wireless office +1 408 383 7626 Skype: cor_van_de_water XoIP +31 87 784 1130 private: cvandewater.info http://www.proxim.com This email message (including any attachments) contains confidential and proprietary information of Proxim Wireless Corporation. If you received this message in error, please delete it and notify the sender. Any unauthorized use, disclosure, distribution, or copying of any part of this message is prohibited. -----Original Message----- From: EV [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Chris Tromley via EV Sent: Friday, July 29, 2016 3:40 PM To: Willie2; Electric Vehicle Discussion List Subject: Re: [EVDL] Fwd: EVLN: GM's 1st 200mi EV will launch as a driverless (autonomous) Lyft platform On Fri, Jul 29, 2016 at 1:00 PM, Willie2 via EV <[email protected]> wrote: > On 07/29/2016 08:00 AM, Chris Tromley via EV wrote: > >> Trying to jump the gun, or even worse, calling what we have now >> "autopilot" >> is beyond idiotic. I have a great deal of respect for Elon Musk, but that >> is the stupidest thing I've seen him do. >> > Have you driven a Tesla with AutoPilot? No, and I fail to see how that is relevant. I'm sure it does what it does very well. But what it does is *not* what would be expected by a non-technical person when you call it "autopilot." That is, being able to let the car drive itself. (So you can watch a movie. Or sleep on the way to work.) Don't start with an admonishment to read the manual. It is well known that many people don't. When you call a feature or suite of features something misleading, and that package is critical to passenger safety, tragic results follow. All so the public will perceive Tesla as being 'leading edge' and at parity with Google and other automakers on the SDV bandwagon. Musk is a very tech-savvy guy. Most of the public is not. Where I live it seems there are as many Teslas as Mercedes. What that should tell Musk is that his customers are buying his cars because they are good cars and they are a status symbol. *Not* because those customers are tech junkies and will see past the marketing spin that the term "autopilot" is in describing Tesla's driver aids. They are actually pretty clueless, taking the description literally and putting themselves and others at risk. Musk got way ahead of himself on this one. Chris -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.evdl.org/private.cgi/ev-evdl.org/attachments/20160729/3477be99/attachment.htm> _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org Read EVAngel's EV News at http://evdl.org/evln/ Please discuss EV drag racing at NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA) _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org Read EVAngel's EV News at http://evdl.org/evln/ Please discuss EV drag racing at NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
