--- title: "An Honest Glossary of Terms Relating to Self-Driving, Mobility, Tesla, and More" description: "We still haven't figured out how to talk about cutting-edge automotive technology, and that's creating problems. Here's a handy guide to get everyone on the same page." date: "2018-06-01" modified: "2019-02-06" authors: - name: "Alex Roy" job_title: "Editor-At-Large" link: "https://www.thedrive.com/authors/alex-roy" url: "https://www.thedrive.com/tech/21129/an-honest-glossary-of-terms-relating-to-self-driving-mobility-tesla-and-more" categories: - "Car Tech" - "News" - "News by Brand" - "Self-Driving Tech" - "Tesla News" tags: - "autonomy" - "Electric Vehicle" - "Mobility" - "satire" - "self-driving cars" - "Tesla" --- # An Honest Glossary of Terms Relating to Self-Driving, Mobility, Tesla, and More ![]() *\www.thedrive.com\* Love Elon Musk or hate him, he’s right about the proliferation of fake news, both in general and as it pertains to self-driving technology. One necessary step in fixing the problem is coming to a consensus regarding the terminology we all use around subjects like self-driving, autonomy, and mobility. As there is no definitive public resource for this, I assembled a rough but honest guide to the terms you should know. **5G** - Next-generation high-speed cellular networks. 5G is not necessary for truly autonomous self-driving car—i.e. not reliant on external infrastructure and capable of functioning in any and all conditions—but absolutely essential for the profitable monetization of passengers in a self-driving car. - The foundational element of [Black Mirror]()-inspired startups like [Vugo](), that seek to offer video content in shared autonomous vehicles by converting them into a dystopian hell. ![message-editor%2F1527455060688-wraith.jpg]() *Hell, thy name is connectivity., *Black Mirror** ![message-editor%2F1527454950817-1505850578\_98\_black-mirror-study-guide-fifteen-million-merits.jpg]() *I'll take self-driving cars, but you can keep your connectivity., *Black Mirror** **Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS)** - A broad term covering partially-automated automotive technologies, including radar cruise control, automatic emergency braking, forward collision warning, and lane keeping. - A marketing term for minimum viable automation, or whatever carmakers can rush to market so as to not to be appear to be behind perceived safety leaders like Volvo. - Technologies which may or may not have anything to do with safety, but are often lumped in with safety technologies, like anti-lock brakes. - Level 2 systems that suck. (See below: *SAE & SAE Automation Levels*) **Artificial Intelligence (AI)** - A vague and essentially worthless term covering any decision-making by machine. - How self-driving cars will function in the future. - How to raise VC money (2007-present) assuming you've got a guy with a Hungarian last name attached to your business plan. - The temporary—and illusory—state of human cognition while at Burning Man. - Steven Spielberg's [6th worst film]() after [Ready Player One](), [The BFG](), [Hook](), [War Horse]() and [Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull](), except for the last two minutes when they find Haley Joel Osment frozen in the ice, which is awesome. **Automation** - Any repetitive task performed by a machine. - What is happening to journalism as original reporting is replaced by reposting with bare-minimum commentary/reframing. **Autonomous/Autonomy** - Independence and/or freedom of action. - Any form of automation with exaggerated capabilities. **Autonomous Car/Vehicle** - Vehicles that don't exist yet, and won't for a long time. (See *Geotonomous Car/Vehicle*) **Autopilot** - A system used to control the trajectory of an aircraft without constant "hands-on" control by a human operator. - The brand name for Tesla's ADAS suite. - How you market ADAS to people who don't have pilot's licenses, and who don't ask why planes still have pilots. - The term used by people who don't understand what Tesla Autopilot does, or how it works, to describe any hands-off driving technology. **Autopilot Buddy** - An aftermarket Tesla Autopilot "[Nag Reduction Device]()" designed for those who think they know better than Tesla's engineers, and who don't want to commit suicide alone. - A Tesla-owning friend who insists on demonstrating Autopilot even when you ask them not to. **Big Data** - Critical phrase for any business plan from 2016 on (if data is new the oil, then more must be better, right?). **Car Sharing** - How to make friends (1905-2015). - How to raise VC money (2010-2016). - How not to raise VC money (2017 forward). **Connectivity** - What self-driving car companies need in order to sell passengers content, goods and services, without which the $80 billion spent so far on R&D cannot be recouped. - What self-driving developers need to deploy cars incapable of operating independently. (Se: *5G*) **Central Processing Unit (CPU)** - An electronic circuit that performs programming instructions. - What Intel claims is the best processing solution for self-driving cars. (See: *Graphics Processing Unit*) **Deep Learning** - When AI gets more "intelligent" by moving past simple rules-based logic. - How to raise VC money (2016-present). - What many investors in Tesla, self-driving, and mobility will learn the hard way. **Disruption** - What you want to be doing to the other guy. - What you you claim to be doing even when it's being done to you. - A red flag when included on any CV or social media bio. **Driver Monitoring System (DMS)** - A system to monitor a driver's state of engagement, meant to ensure said driver's ability to maintain and/or take over control of a vehicle, comprised of sensors monitoring biometrics, hand and/or head and/or eye position. - Something Tesla should have included [before deploying Autopilot](). - Something Cadillac doesn't get enough credit for [deploying in SuperCruise](). - What every car should have, if anyone cared about real safety. **Electrek** - The world's finest website for learning about the glorious and inevitable future of electric vehicles, especially Tesla. - An incredibly biased website devoted to reprinting barely disguised press releases, seemingly on behalf of Tesla. - A site that would fail any objectivity test, run by cynics who have blocked almost every credible automotive journalist from following them on Twitter. - A site you should never, ever read, unless you are researching a paper on the annihilation of journalistic ethics. **Electric Vehicle (EV)** - A vehicle powered only by electricity. - Vehicles that sucked until the arrival of the Tesla Model S. **Electrified Vehicles** - What companies lacking an EV in their lineup call their hybrids. - A cynical marketing deflection by companies rushing to catch up to Tesla and GM. **Fleet Learning** - See: "[Is Tesla the New Morgan]()?" **Full Self-Driving** - A meaningless term used by Tesla in an apparent effort to avoid classification of a future self-driving system within the SAE Automation Levels (see below). - Something that better arrive before the first Tesla customers who paid $3,000 for it see their leases expire, at which point there's going to be another [class action lawsuit](). **Geotonomous Car/Vehicle** - An automated vehicle capable of functioning without human input within a clearly defined geographic area. - A term I came up with in [this brilliant article](). **Graphics Processing Unit (GPU)** - A specialized electronic circuit designed to accelerate image and graphics processing. - What NVidia claims is the best processing solution for self-driving cars. (See: *Central Processing Unit*). **Internal Combustion Engine (ICE)** - What propels almost every car and bus on the planet. - What will go away, if you believe Elon Musk. - What will never go away, if you don't. **Level 0** - A horse. **Level 1** - Any car in which a crash is always a driver's fault. **Level 2** - Any car in which the driver can pretend a crash wasn't his fault. **Level 3** - What carmakers call half-backed self-driving functionality, which their marketers want to release despite objections by the lawyers. **Level 4** - What Waymo is doing, and what everyone else wishes they were. **Level 5** - BS, at least for the foreseeable future. **LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging)** - A laser used to detect objects and terrain features. - What Elon Musk says you don't need to deploy "full self-driving" Teslas. - What almost everyone else on the planet thinks you DO need to deploy self-driving cars. **Ludicrous** - The best, fastest version of any Tesla. - The idea that flying cars are coming. Soon, if ever. - The auto industry's efforts to bring a "Tesla-killer" to market (so far). - How cool the Porsche Mission-E looks. - How much positive media coverage Tesla has gotten. - Elon Musk's suggestion that "the media" has victimized him. **Mobility** - The ability to move, possessed by most living things since the dawn of time. - How to raise VC money (2015-present). **Mobility-as-a-Service (Maas)** - The aggregation of two or more adjacent modes of transportation (i.e. bicycle/train, train/plane) via a single point of payment. - The "[Multi-Pass]()" used by [Leeloo Dallas]() in the [The Fifth Element](). **Model Y** - Tesla's upcoming crossover. - What Tesla should have called the X. **Over-The-Air Updates (OTA)** - A method of wirelessly updating vehicular software, commercially popularized by Tesla. - The shame of the rest of the auto industry, still shackled to dealerships who will do anything to stifle innovation and prevent OTA. **Platooning** - The coordinated operation of multiple self-driving vehicles in a convoy, meant to increase road capacity and efficiency. - When two or more companies duplicate the business model of a first-mover and hope for the best. - A word you add to your business plan if trucks are even tangentially involved. - Watching two Oliver Stone movies back-to-back on TBS because your Netflix account expired. **Range Anxiety** - The fear or worry experienced by the rider of a horse (or other animal) who may be unable to reach a desired destination due to lack of food, water and/or rest. Solved via ridesharing (i.e. [Pony Express]()) and the advent of the motorcar. - The fear or worry experienced by the driver of an ICE vehicle who may be unable to reach a desired destination due to lack of fueling infrastructure. Solved via a nationwide network of gas stations. - The fear or worry experienced by the driver of an EV who may be unable to reach a desired destination due to lack of charging infrastructure. - Something Tesla has solved near most major cities/highways in Western Europe and USA. - Something that no longer makes sense in new Teslas, which have ranges equal to the average American family sedan of decades past. **Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE)** - A well-intentioned [professional association and standards developing organization]() whose principal emphasis is on transport industries such as automotive, aerospace, and commercial vehicles. - An organization that invites me back to speak every year, despite internal opposition to my relentless attacks on the SAE Levels of Automation. **SAE Levels of Automation** - The conceptually vague taxonomy which places automation and human-input in a zero-sum relationship, in a failed attempt to classify automated vehicles that utterly ignores precedent in commercial aviation. - A system of thought that omits safety technologies that don't fit and restricts out-of-the-box thinking. - Something that should be ignored except to criticize companies who attempt to associate their products with it. **Safety** - An almost meaningless term describing perceived absence of danger. - A term frequently exploited by self-driving developers to conceal uncertainty over the actual value proposition of autonomous vehicles. - A term frequently exploited by self-driving developers to conceal uncertainty over the safety of their vehicles. - Something most people don't actually care about, even if they say they do. - Something a lot of people began talking about as soon as it become profitable, or potentially profitable. **Self-Driving** - A term so diluted that [it's essentially worthless](). **Solar City** - What Dubai should be, but isn't. - Elon Musk's other company, now merged with Tesla, which no one enjoys talking about. **Subscriptions** - How smart car manufacturers will pull a Hail Mary and annihilate car dealerships as we know them. - The coolest thing about Cadillac, and the least well-known. (See my [op-ed]()*.*) **Teleoperation** - Remote control for cars and trucks. - An interim solution to driverless cars/trucks, in the absence of actual self-driving technologies. - Something that may be more profitable than self-driving, especially the longer it takes for self-driving to arrive. **Tesla Supercharger** - The only EV charging network that's any good. For now. - The most valuable or worthless part of Tesla's portfolio, depending whom you ask. - A great place to go cruising to meet like-minded individuals. But only if you own a Tesla. **Transition Warning Systems** - The big missing piece to partial automation of cars, short of geotonomy. - [What Cadillac has done fairly well, and Tesla seems to have ignored](). - Why Level 3 will never be deployed until this is solved. I could go on, but this seems like a good start. Corrections? Omissions? Please share in the comments. *Alex Roy is founder of the* [*Human Driving Association*]()*, editor-at-large at* [*The Drive*]()*, host of* [*The Autonocast*]()*, co-host of /DRIVE on NBC Sports, and author of* [The Driver](). *He* *has set numerous endurance driving records, including the infamous Cannonball Run record. You can follow him on* [*Facebook*]()*,* *[Twitter](),* *and* [*Instagram*]()*.* ## Author Co-host of The Autonocast and /DRIVE on NBC Sports, and author of *The Driver*, Roy has set endurance driving records in Europe & the USA in the internal combustion, EV, 3-wheeler & Semi-Autonomous Classes, including the infamous Cannonball Run record. He is also Founder of Noho Sound, Producer of 32 Hours 7 Minutes, and has spoken at the FBI, CIA, MIT & Stanford about numerous driving records which must still remain secret. ### Author social links [Instagram]() [Twitter]()