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Sub-$200 Lidar could reshuffle auto sensor economics

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Re: Sub-$200 Lidar could reshuffle auto sensor economics

#31
post #16
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The minute internet became widespread it was game over. Pros and cons. :/ It'll never happen, but we need a bill of rights for privacy. The laypeople aren't well-versed or pained enough to ask for this, and big interest donors oppose it. Maybe the EU and states like California will pioneer something here, though? Edit: in general, I'm far more excited by cheap lidar tech than I am afraid of the downsides. We just nee…

The EU already has. GDPR and the AI Act puts a lot of limits on what you can do in the open space, although it doesn't always go far enough.

And barely gets enforced

Re: Sub-$200 Lidar could reshuffle auto sensor economics

#32

@dang .... do these comments seem organic to you? old accounts with almost zero karma going out of their way to use the same verbiage to compliment waymo 18 minutes after an article gets posted? .... dead internet at work.

Anytime a Tesla or Elon related article is posted it gets a barrage of negative comments usually FUD like. Any neutral or positive comment gets downvoted heavily. Bit suspicious to say the least, very clear pattern, they are not doing it very well should be a bit more nuanced.

Re: Sub-$200 Lidar could reshuffle auto sensor economics

#33

@dang .... do these comments seem organic to you? old accounts with almost zero karma going out of their way to use the same verbiage to compliment waymo 18 minutes after an article gets posted? .... dead internet at work.

Please don't post like this. If you suspect something, please email us (hn@ycombinator.com) with links to specific comments. The guidelines are clear abut this:

Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.

Re: Sub-$200 Lidar could reshuffle auto sensor economics

#34
Interestingly, there have been people in the LIDAR industry predicting costs like this for many years. I heard numbers like $250 per vehicle back in 2012 [1]

Of course, ambitious pricing like this is all about economies of scale - sensors that are used in production vehicles are ordered by the million, and that lowers the costs massively. When the huge orders didn't materialise, the economies of scale and low prices didn't materialise either.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20161013165833/http://content.us...

Re: Sub-$200 Lidar could reshuffle auto sensor economics

#35
post #24
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And, I guess, even more advanced surveillance.

LIDAR would be preferrable to cameras when it comes to privacy actually

I don't think it makes a difference. Dense lidar goes you more information than 2d colour imagery.

There are SLAM cameras that only select "interesting" points, which are privacy preserving. They are also very low power.

Re: Sub-$200 Lidar could reshuffle auto sensor economics

#36
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LIDAR would be preferrable to cameras when it comes to privacy actually

I’d definitely feel much better if most cameras in the world were replaced by LIDAR. I feel like it would be much tougher to have a flawless facial recognition program with LIDAR alone

Who needs facial recognition if you can identify people based on gait?

Re: Sub-$200 Lidar could reshuffle auto sensor economics

#37
post #6

Oh hell yeah, we can finally stop the braindead attempts to make a safe self-driving car with just cameras.

Yes, silly using just cameras, I mean humans have Lidar sensors, that why they can drive, why didn't new just copy that....oh wait. It all seriousness though, Tesla are producing cyber cabs now which are 10th the price of Waymo's and can drive autonomously anywhere in the world. I think we can see where this is going. (Hint: not well for Waymo) Also the article is speculative 'MicroVision says its sensor could one da…

This is a weirdly tired counterpoint that Elon and Elonstans like to bandy about as if it's an apples to apples comparison. Humans have a weirdly ultra-high-dynamic-range binocular vision system mounted on an advanced ptz/swivel gimbal that allows for a great degree of freedom of movement, parallax effects, and a complex heuristic system for analyzing vision data.

The Tesla FSD system has... well, sure, a few more cameras, but they're low resolution, and in inconveniently fixed locations.

My alley has an occlusion at the corner where it connects to the main road: a very tall, very ample bush that basically makes it impossible to authoritatively check oncoming traffic to my left. I, a human, can determine that if I see the light flicker even slightly as it filters through the bushes, that the path is not clear: a car is likely causing that very slight change in light. My Tesla has no clue at all that that's happening. And worse, the perpendicular camera responsible for checking cross-traffic is mounted _behind my head_ on the b-pillar, in a fixed location that means that without nosing my car _into_ the travel lane, there is literally no way for it to be sure the path is clear.

This edge case is navigated near-perfectly by Waymo, since its roof-mounted lidar can see above and beyond the bush and determine that the path is clear. And to hit back on the "Tesla is making cheaper cars that can drive autonomously anywhere in the world": I mean, they still aren't? Not authoritatively. Not authoritatively enough that they aren't seeing all sorts of interventions in the few "driverless" trials they're doing in Austin. Not authoritatively enough when I have my Tesla FSD to glory. It works well enough on the fat part of the bell curve, but those edges will get you, and a vision only system means that it is extremely brittle in certain conditions and with certain failure modes, that a lidar/radar backup help _enhance_.

Moreover, Waymo has brought lidar development in-house, they're working to dramatically reduce their vehicle platform cost by reducing some redundant sensors, and they can now simulate a ground truth model of an absurd number of edge cases and odd scenarios, as well as simulate different conditions for real-world locations in parallel with their new world modeling systems.

None of which reads to me as "not going well for Waymo." Waymo completes over 450,000 fully autonomous rides per week right now. They're dramatically lowering their own barriers to new cities/geographies/conditions, and they're pushing down the cost per unit substantially. Yeah, it won't get to be as cheap as Tesla owning the entire means of production, but I'm still extremely bullish on Waymo being the frontrunner for autonomous driving for the foreseeable future.

Re: Sub-$200 Lidar could reshuffle auto sensor economics

#38

@dang .... do these comments seem organic to you? old accounts with almost zero karma going out of their way to use the same verbiage to compliment waymo 18 minutes after an article gets posted? .... dead internet at work.

Anytime a Tesla or Elon related article is posted it gets a barrage of negative comments usually FUD like. Any neutral or positive comment gets downvoted heavily. Bit suspicious to say the least, very clear pattern, they are not doing it very well should be a bit more nuanced.

There is no evidence of any such organised campaign. The critical comments we see against that company and person are generally from known, established HN users, and align with frequently-expressed sentiments among the general public. And the complaint is just as often made that "anything remotely critical" about that company and person is flagged. If posts about the topic are being downvoted and flagged, it's mostly because that person and company are in the news so frequently that most commentary about them is repetitive, sensationalist and uninteresting, and thus off topic for HN.

Re: Sub-$200 Lidar could reshuffle auto sensor economics

#39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have had the pleasure of riding a few times in SanFrancisco. The drive was delightful and felt really safe. It handled the SF terrain, traffic and mixed traffic like trams very well. I wouldnt trust a self driving tesla ( or any camera only systems) though!

Why wouldn't you trust a Telsa, millions of people let there Tesla drive them all over USA (not geofences like Waymo) without touching the wheel from parking spot to parking spot everyday. Have you tried it?

Maybe because of the multiple investigations Tesla has currently due to crashes, deaths, injuries, etc. all caused by "whoops our cameras were fooled by some glare/fog and accelerated into a truck/pole"

Re: Sub-$200 Lidar could reshuffle auto sensor economics

#40

Interestingly, there have been people in the LIDAR industry predicting costs like this for many years. I heard numbers like $250 per vehicle back in 2012 [1] Of course, ambitious pricing like this is all about economies of scale - sensors that are used in production vehicles are ordered by the million, and that lowers the costs massively. When the huge orders didn't materialise, the economies of scale and low prices…

Also 'Luminar Technologies, a prominent U.S. lidar manufacturer, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in December 2025' LIDAR is useful in a small set of scenarios (calibration and validation) but do not bet the farm on it or make it the centre piece of your sensor suite.
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