On March 10, Steve Wosniak announced he had bought a Lucid Air. Coincidence or not, Apple’s co-founder had just spoken to Steve-O about his Tesla for an episode of the YouTube show Wild Ride! What Wosniak said there is no surprise for those who already faced phantom braking and other issues with Tesla Autopilot. However, it seems to have a connection with his decision to buy another EV.
The Apple co-founder was talking about social media at about 19:30 in the video. Then he drifted to his trips around California during the international health crisis and how “those algorithms just don’t know what the dumbest human knows." According to him, “driving a Tesla will teach you that.”
He said that specifically when he was describing one of the hundreds of phantom braking episodes he had to deal with in this car. Without calling it phantom braking, Wozniak told Steve-O what happened whenever he turned anything on in his Tesla, even “just cruise control.”
“We drive 10 mph, 40 mph, 70 mph, and 80 mph all the time. When we’re on an interstate (...) going 75 mph, and all of a sudden, the car screeches the brakes! The dog gets thrown forward, and it slows down. If there’s nobody in the rearview mirror that we have to speed up for, I let it go all the way down: 25 mph on an interstate. A Tesla with nothing around, no cars around, no nothing. (...) This is so dangerous! It’s happened to us a hundred times, at least, because we drive so much.”
The Apple co-founder also complained about Navigate on Autopilot, which steers the car on the road and controls acceleration and braking, which made a lot of people believe it was autonomous driving. It was never the case.
“My gosh! Sometimes, it kind of goes over the line a little, and there’s a truck right there. If a truck kind of moves towards you a little, you should… A human driver would just pull away a few inches. And it doesn’t do that. I remember recently (...) I’m driving along, and all of a sudden, there’s a semi on my right. The car lurched towards the semi, and I had to quickly grab control. Wow, I mean… That would have been death!”
Wozniak also shared how imprecise he thinks Autopilot is in some other situations.
“You’re on a freeway, and (...) there’s a merger lane coming in. (...) The lane gets wider where it is and (the Tesla) starts driving like a drunk person. But the car coming up ahead… As a smart human, you would just see (...) we’re going to be equal, so I’ll back off a little. Just easy to do. The Tesla lets you go right up next to it, screeches the brake on to get out of the way because it has to by then. This is just not the way humans think.”
Finally, the Apple co-founder disputes the idea that Tesla Vision will be enough to give the company the robotaxis it has promised for next year since 2016.
“They used to make it sound like, “oh, artificial intelligence will be like a human. We have eyes. The Tesla has cameras, and it will be able to do what a human does. The trouble is we don’t know how the brain’s wired. We do not know how the brain does that stuff.”
A week after the video was published, Wozniak shared on Twitter that he bought a Lucid Air. On May 13, Lucid shared a picture of the man getting delivery of his new electric sedan. Hopefully, Wozniak will soon share what he thinks about DreamDrive and its 32 sensors, including a LiDAR.
He said that specifically when he was describing one of the hundreds of phantom braking episodes he had to deal with in this car. Without calling it phantom braking, Wozniak told Steve-O what happened whenever he turned anything on in his Tesla, even “just cruise control.”
“We drive 10 mph, 40 mph, 70 mph, and 80 mph all the time. When we’re on an interstate (...) going 75 mph, and all of a sudden, the car screeches the brakes! The dog gets thrown forward, and it slows down. If there’s nobody in the rearview mirror that we have to speed up for, I let it go all the way down: 25 mph on an interstate. A Tesla with nothing around, no cars around, no nothing. (...) This is so dangerous! It’s happened to us a hundred times, at least, because we drive so much.”
“My gosh! Sometimes, it kind of goes over the line a little, and there’s a truck right there. If a truck kind of moves towards you a little, you should… A human driver would just pull away a few inches. And it doesn’t do that. I remember recently (...) I’m driving along, and all of a sudden, there’s a semi on my right. The car lurched towards the semi, and I had to quickly grab control. Wow, I mean… That would have been death!”
Wozniak also shared how imprecise he thinks Autopilot is in some other situations.
“You’re on a freeway, and (...) there’s a merger lane coming in. (...) The lane gets wider where it is and (the Tesla) starts driving like a drunk person. But the car coming up ahead… As a smart human, you would just see (...) we’re going to be equal, so I’ll back off a little. Just easy to do. The Tesla lets you go right up next to it, screeches the brake on to get out of the way because it has to by then. This is just not the way humans think.”
“They used to make it sound like, “oh, artificial intelligence will be like a human. We have eyes. The Tesla has cameras, and it will be able to do what a human does. The trouble is we don’t know how the brain’s wired. We do not know how the brain does that stuff.”
A week after the video was published, Wozniak shared on Twitter that he bought a Lucid Air. On May 13, Lucid shared a picture of the man getting delivery of his new electric sedan. Hopefully, Wozniak will soon share what he thinks about DreamDrive and its 32 sensors, including a LiDAR.
A tech icon for a tech icon. Thanks for dreaming ahead with us, Woz. @SteveWoz #LucidOwnersClub pic.twitter.com/OQq8VFnOJf
— Lucid Motors (@LucidMotors) May 13, 2022
Our new EV is a Lucid Air.https://t.co/CwBK4DpNmp
— Steve Wozniak (@stevewoz) March 10, 2022