I hope that besides cooling the car it includes a feature that pulls down some signs in the windows that says "no really the A/C is on and my kid/dog is fine, don't break the glass".
I mean I'm kinda joking here but not really. This has been a problem for Prius owners for a long time (they can have a/c on manually when the car is off)
Definitely. The fact the some states allow people to break the glass on cars to rescue overheating animals under certain circumstances is good. The fact that people know that they are allowed to do this under some circumstances, but not all the requirements that make it okay is not good.
I once left my dog in my car while I walked 150 feet across a single level parking lot into a building, spent 90 seconds inside, and walked back to the car, to find a note on the windshield saying "Your dog is dying in there! You should be ashamed! This is illegal and I should report you!" The car was chilly from A/C before I left, every window was cracked at least a few inches while I was gone, and obviously the person couldn't have stuck around long, because I wasn't gone more than a few minutes. If it's that easy to mistake a panting dog for a "dying" dog, I can see how this is a problem.
I never leave my small kids in the car to enter a building. Even if I just plan to spend only a couple seconds inside the building, things could somehow go bad (some kind of emergency), and then nobody knows about the kids. Especially in hot weather. Apart from the potential of a traumatizing situation for children, even a stationary AC might fail.
Yes, that's all not so likely, but why take any chances?
Driving your car is more risky than the odds the A/C happening to fail and the car abruptly overheating in a minute. A serious car accident is not so likely, but why take any chances?
I don't think that is what they meant. It read to me that they meant, a personal emergency could happen to _them_ while in the store (heart attack, fall and hit head, robbery, etc..). What would have been a safe 5-minute trip could turn into a multi-hour ordeal, and nobody knows to go rescue the kid stuck in the (now lethally) hot car.
Probability may be low, but it is an increased risk that can be mitigated to a certain extent by just not getting in the habit of leaving your kids in the car when running even short errands.
The safest bet is just to wait for a couple of minutes, observe the animal for any changes. It's going to become really clear in that time if there's distress, or just... being a dog.
Then, if you're still concerned call the police, and wait for them. If while waiting you become concerned for the dog's life, break the window.
It's also tremendously inconvenient. You might be a few minutes late for your next thing if you wait for the police. Doing the right thing is only reasonable if it costs nothing.
(In case I did deadpan too well, BIG FAT SARCASM INDICATOR.)
I know it's sarcasm, just wanted to add that I've never seen police respond in under 30 minutes. Even when the police department is literally 20 minutes WALKING distance.
Edit: That was in a small town though, I guess it's different in the city where I constantly hear sirens.
Hurray for state laws that have released the self-righteous upon us. My wife got confronted in a parking lot by self-appointed Dog Police. She was more polite than I would have been ("piss off...and go take a community college physics class"). I mean, sure, here in Texas it can get warm...
Oh, wait, we live in Seattle, where 90F is record-breaking heat. And it was 68F that day. If I were in that car, I would have been rolling the windows up a little for fear of getting chilly.
>Oh, wait, we live in Seattle, where 90F is record-breaking heat. And it was 68F that day.
That's quite a dangerous myth to be propagating. Automobiles are greenhouses, a technology which allows them to reach substantially higher temperatures than the ambient air.
I'll say it again: it's Seattle. We're at a latitude where the sun on it's best day in July would get its ass kicked by Texas' December sun. And we have trees: lots of them. So if you're picturing my dogs sitting in a barren Wal-Mart parking lot in the blazing summer sun, where that chart might accurately apply, please reimagine the scenario. Picture a car parked beneath shady evergreens in a place where the sun weakly peeks above the horizon for a bit.
As for that chart, it might accurate in Florida. But I've tested our camper van with its picture rear window facing south all day in July. Approximately 70F ambient, it got to low-90s in there, not 104F. I don't know what the dogs did when I was growing up when it would be 90s for days on end, but I don't recall them dying in droves.
Though that chart is a good way to bring the problem to light, I guess, don't be breaking my window based on its presumed accuracy for all situations.
For every rational person, there's an emotional, narrow minded, "Everyone is bad!", over reactive person. Especially in certain counties. Counties where people have too much time on their hands; like Marin County.
O.k. What's up with the vitriol dude?
Over the years I have owned some large breed dogs. A Bull Mastiff, and two rescued pit bull/American bull dog mixes. They were all over 140 lbs. All three dogs wanted nothing to do with anything within 8 feet of my truck.
I had them at different points in my life. The pit bull mixes went to dog obedience school, but didn't do well. I was talked into putting one on Proxax for behavioral problems. Hell, at one point we were both on the same SSRI.
The problem with my dogs is they were very territorial. I tried to socialize the pit bull mixes, but by the time the the vaccines had time to build up an immunity; it was just to late for socialization, or obedience school success. They were too set in their ways, and didn't want to be around other dogs, or certain people without my presence. They just didn't like anyone near my truck, or within 8 feet of it.
I didn't like to leave my dogs in their backyard, so I would take them out on the weekends, and after work. Sue me!
I would sometimes do errands with them.
I would park my truck, with a Leer shell, filled with bowls of water, and two windows open, with custom grating on the sliding Windows, under a tree, or a remote area with shade. I was never gone more than 20 minutes.
They were never in danger of overheating. The "the over-reactors" always seemed to assume the worse. This one lady accused me of going to work, and leaving my dogs in the truck all day. Another accused me of leaving my dogs in a hot vechicle, and was in the process of calling the Humane Society, as I took off.
It only happened two times I know of, but it hurt. Those dogs were never in any danger. I treated those dogs like babies.
After everything I just wrote, I'm still glad they have that law about breaking windows.
I can guarantee this, if anyone decided to break the plexiglass widows on my Leer shell, or cut the wire over the windows; that "know-it-all" would not be alive. My dogs would have tore them to pieces.
I think the moral of the story is don't assume. Don't stereotype. Don't always assume the worse.
(I am now I a bad mood, and miss my dogs. They all lived to old age, but passed. I miss them more than my father. Now--that's not right? You didn't have my father. Good night people.)
I can guarantee this, if anyone decided to break the plexiglass widows on my Leer shell, or cut the wire over the windows; that "know-it-all" would not be alive.
Pittie-Mastiff came to live at our house as of February. Friendliest guy, loves everyone he meets. I stop at the Korean grocery down the street a lot, talk to the owners all the time as best their limited English allows. Had Brody in the car one day, owner expresses interest in saying "hi". "Sure, he loves everyone", I said as the guy approached the open window. Whoops, Brody loves everyone as long as they STAY THE HELL AWAY FROM HIS CAR. No harm, no foul, and now we know better.
But I pity the fool who thinks they're going to "save" Brody from the car that's parked in the shade in the blistering 70F Seattle heat.
I assume you are talking about the solar roof option of the 3rd gen Prius models. It's not quite the same, as it just powers a ventilation fan to bring (hopefully) cooler air into the cabin - it doesn't run the AC.
If you park in the sun it's still going to be hot in the car, but it's not as uncomfortable when you first open it - I still wouldn't leave myself or a dog locked inside without the windows open.
You can however leave the ignition on, with the AC on, and the engine will kick in every 10 minutes or so - however that's effectively the same as leaving you keys in the car, if you break in you can just drive away.
No. All the Praises let you run the A/C whether you were moving or not. Since the "engine" is always on, as long as the key is nearby and the on button is pressed you can run the A/C.
> All the Praises let you run the A/C whether you were moving or not.
All modern vehicles allow this...
You're essentially saying the when the engine is on, the AC works. It has nothing to do with being a Prius or not. The only difference is that a Prius can switch into EV mode while the battery allows (and gets pretty silent) before switching back to motor (when the battery is depleted).
I've never seen a vehicle which couldn't run the AC without the vehicle moving. Maybe that was the case with vehicles before my lifetime.
PS - We own a Prius V and a Subaru Outback, both allow this.
I'm not quite sure what you are disagreeing with, but I assumed your original comment was about parking your car and leaving the AC running while you go shopping or whatever.
As I said, you can do this with a Prius but it's effectively the same as leaving the keys in the ignition as the car needs to be in "READY" mode, which means everything is running (at least on my standard 2010 model - maybe the PHEV model is different) - if you can get it, you can drive away without needing the key. You can also start the AC from the remote, but it cuts out after 3 minutes or when the battery gets low - it doesn't use the engine to recharge it.
Since there is no engine noise the sound of the A/C is actually pretty loud when you stand next to a tesla with the A/C running. When it's not too hot I like to ride with my windows down just to enjoy the silence
So the biggest news here seems to be the upgrades to Autopilot. (https://www.tesla.com/blog/upgrading-autopilot-seeing-world-...). They describe a fantastic amount of new technology, including using radar to make a point cloud despite the fact that "[s]omething made of wood or painted plastic ... is almost as transparent as glass to radar." This venture reeks Murphy's Law. I'll let someone else be the guinea pig in this experiment.
"It is hard to tell from a single frame whether an object is moving or stationary or to distinguish spurious reflections."
What, they're not getting range rate directly from the radar? You can tell if an object is moving towards or away from you from one frame if you have range rate. Bosch automotive radars do return range rate.[1] Even 1990s automotive radars returned range rate. That's one of the huge advantages of radar over vision. Range and range rate go into a very simple formula which yields time to collision. Vision is lousy at range rate and gets worse as the distance increases. Radar is good at range rate and the error is constant out the range of the radar.
Whomever wrote that piece of PR probably doesn't really know how it works.
My recollection is Tesla has been leaning heavily on optical image processing. Perhaps the radar is, or was, not very sophisticated? For example, can a single unit by itself tell, in one frame, if an object is moving laterally to its field of view?
The radar was added to all Tesla vehicles in October 2014 as part of the Autopilot hardware suite, but was only meant to be a supplementary sensor to the primary camera and image processing system.
New autopilot updates are only pushed out after they've been run against simulated data (in house validation, "the gauntlet" corpus of scenarios) and then real world data (inertly) and perform significantly better than existing algorithms.
Presumably there are a ton of beta testers that put a 100,000 or so miles running this actively in a wide array of road driving scenarios before they roll this out to customers as well. Under beta testing scenarios, a single driver should be, even with time for charging, be able to do about 250 miles/day of driving - figure 10,000 miles/month. So, to get 100K of real-world road experience, would only take 10 drivers/month (or 20 drivers 2 weeks, etc.... Mythical Man month doesn't apply here)
Tesla is accumulating ~1 million miles of data every 10 hours fleet-wide [1]. With their environment, they could presumably beta test across the entire fleet, as the changes are inert and only data is sent back as to what the vehicle would've done (compared to what it actually did).
Understood they do inert testing with their existing fleet. I'm talking about real, rubber hits the road, vehicles actively running the firmware. I have to believe that prior to rolling out firmware on the fleet, Tesla rolls it out to be actively run on some set of beta testing vehicles - perhaps actively run by Tesla Employees driving a variety of real-world road conditions.
Correct, but you need to sign an NDA to run (or rather, for your vehicle's VIN to be whitelisted for pre-release firmware bundle retrievals) a non-GA release.
Actually, I think they record all of the data all of the time anyway, so they can turn the sensor on and turn off the decisionmaking, and gather info using real-world data to see what the new version would have done.
It's like beta-testing without actually beta-testing.
9. Every time a new car was introduced car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.
>6. The oil, water temperature, and alternator warning lights would all be replaced by a single "This Car Has Performed An Illegal Operation" warning light.
> 10. You'd have to press the "Start" button to turn the engine off."
Three out of ten; that's better than most lists of predictions of the future. Now, if rumours are to be believed, we'll see number 5 shortly.
On my wife's car the play/pause and toggle-repeat "buttons" are both on the touch screen right next to each other and are maybe 1cm in size. It is easily the worst interface I've ever used in a car for anything.
Interesting that their marketing video has someone driving on the cycle path at 00:26. Maybe warning about that is something they can address in the next software update :)
It's already there, the steering wheel will vibrate when you go over the line to simulate those bumps on the side of the road. It even goes off if you simply cross a dotted lane that it detects. I can almost guarantee that driver was feeling the bumps (unless they turned the feature off).
As a UI designer, I have a question for any Tesla owners out there.
Are the UI text and interface elements large enough?
They appear pretty small for their intended use in a busy and distracting car environment. I notice that with each revision they bump up in size and simplicity just a little, so maybe they're narrowing in on a more optimal size, but I probably would have started much larger and simpler. I've always been curious how it is to actually use in day to day driving.
I came into the ownership experience pretty nervous that the touchscreen would be a distraction. But it works and works well. The screen is huge and all the targets are a comfortable size. You don't really get a feeling for the real scale of thing from a screenshot. It's organized and intuitive, with common controls well anchored to the edges and corners.
Working with an active navigation route was the one area where I felt they could improve. In particular, the UI for cancelling guidance is too small and fussy. I'm probably not the only one who noticed because it looks like they reworked some of that.
I am NOT optimistic about how they appear (in 8.0) to be hiding the main navigation at the top. Doesn't seem like the extra space was ever needed. It feels like a cosmetic decision that adds an extra step.
I don't own a Tesla, but I've driven them, and I'd echo this sentiment. The screen really is huge, and the UI works surprisingly well. I say surprisingly because I came into the experience thinking it'd be difficult to navigate, hard to hit the right things on screen while driving etc., but there was none of that. All in all it was a nice experience, and I can't say I missed physical knobs and switches much.
The one thing I immediately did miss in the car though, oddly enough, were the assist handles – the ones above the passenger doors where you can hang dry cleaning etc. There were none of those. I know this has nothing to do with the original question, but still. One of those details I didn't think I needed (or wanted) until they were missed.
Geez, especially in a car that can accelerate as quickly as a Tesla, you'd think they'd give the passengers some nice handles in a predictable familiar spot like that!
Small detail you're right, but that's pretty funny.
Haha that's actually exactly how I noticed: a friend was driving and wanted to see how fast the thing would go. Naturally I grab for the handle and – it's just not there. :o)
For what it's worth, I'd say about the same. You can generally ignore the touchscreen while driving, and at least for me, its mere presence isn't distracting. I was worried about it, but it turned out not to be a problem.
I think it's more likely downvoted for the same reason the hack didn't appear on the HN home page, while hacks on Chryslers or the VW emissions scandal do, repeatedly: don't criticise Tesla.
Even when they apparently employ idiots who hook the web browser up to the brakes.
The problem is that to be able to do OTA updates, you have to have the control system hooked up to the internet in some capacity. The only way to avoid this is to airgap the 2 and make the user plug in a patch cord to update. Of course that runs into the issue of interfering with their fleet telemetry and background 'alpha test static verification'
Well, sure, if it's 72 and partly cloudy out. My car can do that for years by leaving the windows open. This feature only really matters when it's swelteringly hot out.
What if I park a black Tesla at the San Diego airport for a week-long vacation, and it's 100 degrees and unmitigated direct sun? Will I come back to a battery that can't get me home?
That would be when I would want this feature to avoid damage to my car from it overheating. But also when it's most likely to run down the battery.
Isn't "up to a year on full charge" also the longest you can leave a Model S parked before the battery goes flat and it's bricked? It does sound like they've calculated their figures based on the cooling never actually kicking in.
Not even. You lose about 1% per day, and then the manual warns that it's bad to let it sit for more than two months after it goes to zero. That's about five months total, if you start from 100%, before something bad happens. I don't think they specify exactly what, but better not to find out.
If it can handle a year on a full charge, then unless your battery is below 2%, it'll last a week. And if it was below 2%, you probably wouldn't be able to make it home anyways.
The parent's point is that the circumstances would dictate how quickly the battery drains, so it wouldn't always last a year on full charge. (And therefore not always a week with > 2% charge.) That said, it's not trying to keep it chilly, just not deathly hot, so I expect it would still be fine.
I'm surprised by that, my 2006 Prius has internal sensors for activating the theft alarm, with a button to disable if you're leaving things that move inside.
BMW wanted to charge me €450 for an update for my navigation CD. That was around 2004 or so. Oh, and around €1000 for an iPod connector. The nerve of these guys.
It's because you've chosen another region than "United States". Click on your region/country flag in the bar below and change it to the US - and the page will work.
Weirdly, it doesn't seem like tesla.com/lang/software exists - which it redirects to.
I hope that besides cooling the car it includes a feature that pulls down some signs in the windows that says "no really the A/C is on and my kid/dog is fine, don't break the glass".
I mean I'm kinda joking here but not really. This has been a problem for Prius owners for a long time (they can have a/c on manually when the car is off)