Waymo says it's ditching the term 'self-driving' in dig at Tesla
The Google sister company [Waymo] says it is through using the term "self-driving cars" to describe its fleet of autonomous vehicles. And it is subtly pointing fingers at Elon Musk's Tesla as the reason why.
Waymo says it is committing to "using more deliberate language" in its marketing, educational, and promotional materials going forward. This means the company will no longer refer to its vehicles as "self-driving," Waymo says. For example, the company is changing the name of its three-year-old public education campaign from "Let's Talk Self-Driving" to "Let's Talk Autonomous Driving."
"It may seem like a small change, but it's an important one, because precision in language matters and could save lives," the company wrote in a blog post published on January 5th. "We're hopeful that consistency will help differentiate the fully autonomous technology Waymo is developing from driver-assist technologies (sometimes erroneously referred to as 'self-driving' technologies) that require oversight from licensed human drivers for safe operation."
The references to driver-assist technologies appears to be a shot at Tesla, which last year activated a software update in some of its cars called "Full Self Driving." The software, which enables drivers to use many of Autopilot's advanced driver-assist features on local, non-highway streets, is still technically in beta. But an unknown number of white-listed drivers have received it and have been actively testing it on public roads — often filming and uploading those tests on YouTube.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Thursday January 07 2021, @08:13PM (4 children)
They didn't change the term to save lives, but to save on lawsuits. People who get injured in self-driving cars that fail can sue the maker on false advertising ground. Not calling the vehicle self-driving allows the maker to counter that they never said it was fully capable of handling all situations without human assistance.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday January 07 2021, @08:42PM
In other words, someone hired an MBA.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Thursday January 07 2021, @09:33PM
This is a company that wants cars without steering wheels [theverge.com], but the marketing is what's going to do them in?
Sadly, you are probably right.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by rigrig on Thursday January 07 2021, @10:22PM (1 child)
Not really: they changed it to "autonomous driving" exactly to make it clear humans are not involved.
This is to clearly differentiate themselves from (people crashing their) driver-assist cars.
(I wonder if Tesla owners can't sue for false advertising already, seems pretty hard to explain that "full self driving autopilot" means "it needs a human driver to pay attention at all times".)
No one remembers the singer.
(Score: 1, Redundant) by everdred on Thursday January 07 2021, @11:40PM
+1 Informative
(I blew all my mod points earlier...)
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Friday January 08 2021, @05:49PM
So because advertisers have debased the term "self-driving" so that it no longer means what it obviously means, Google is advancing a new term for the advertisers to abuse?