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BYD's cheapest electric cars to have Lidar self-driving tech

thedriven.io

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Re: BYD's cheapest electric cars to have Lidar self-driving tech

#111

Post by neilv »

wongarsu wrote: post #100
pjc50 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lidar is incredibly low power and fast scanning, the retinal risk is probably much less than having to drive when the sun is near the horizon.

However LIDAR safety is currently mostly evaluated on the assumption of a single LIDAR being present. If LIDAR becomes common, with multiple systems per vehicle, the probability of multiple LIDAR beams of different LIDARs hitting your eye at the same time goes up

And that's if scanning never malfunctions.

Everyone is accustomed to cars malfunctioning, in numerous ways.

An intuition from an analogy that should be recognizable to HN...

Everyone is accustomed to data breaches of everything, and thinks it's just something you have to live with. But the engineers in a position to warn that a given system is almost guaranteed to have data breaches... don't warn. And don't even think that it's something to warn about. And if they did warn, they'd be fired or suppressed. And their coworkers would wonder what was wrong with them, torpedoing their career over something that's SOP, and that other engineers will make happen anyway. Any security effort is on reactive mitigation, theatre, CYA, and regulatory capture to escape liability.

I'd like to think that automotive engineers are much more ethical than tech industry, but two things going on:

(1) we're seeing a lot of sketchy tech in cars, like surveillance, and unsafe use of touchscreens;

(2) anything "AI" in a car is presumably getting culture influence from tech industry.

So I wouldn't trust automakers on anything intersecting with tech industry.

Re: BYD's cheapest electric cars to have Lidar self-driving tech

#112

Post by catgirlinspace »

vachina wrote: post #97
tim333 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hadn't heard that criticism. You can get multiple Waymos near each other without them crashing into things.

When I see Waymos fail they usually fail together

Doesn’t mean they’re failing because of interfering lidar though. If it’s something like them failing due to the road being blocked or something, it makes sense they’d fail together. Assuming they’re on the same OS, why would one know how to handle that situation and another not?

Re: BYD's cheapest electric cars to have Lidar self-driving tech

#113

Post by uyzstvqs »

cyberax wrote: post #16

Keep in mind, that $25k AUD is just $16600. And for that price, you're getting a real car with driver-assist features and a reasonable crash safety rating. The US car manufacturers are cooked.

That's because it's predatory pricing.

If these cars are to be sold in western markets, there needs to be strong regulation. Absolutely no digital data connections, for starters.

Re: BYD's cheapest electric cars to have Lidar self-driving tech

#114

Post by SapporoChris »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #29
AnotherGoodName wrote: post #5

Lidars come down in price ~40x. https://cleantechnica.com/2025/03/20/lidars-wicked-cost-drop... Meanwhile visible light based tech is going up in price due to competing with ai on the extra gpu need while lidar gets the range/depth side of things for free. Ideally cars use both but if you had to choose one or the other for cost you’d be insane to choose vision over lidar. Musk made an ill timed decision to go vision…

Can lidar say what colour is traffic light?

I believe traffic lights currently use three bulbs, red, yellow and green. Even without color a computer system can easily determine when each light is lit.

If there are single bulbs displaying red, green and yellow please give clear examples.

Re: BYD's cheapest electric cars to have Lidar self-driving tech

#115

Post by bluGill »

kelipso wrote: post #76
general1465 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, you don't need to ban anything. Just force the rule, that if company sells self driving, they are also taking full liability for any damages of this system.

Why is it preferable to wait for people to die and then sue the company instead of banning it in the first place?

People die in car crashes all the time. Self driving can kill a lot of people and still be vastly better than humans.

Re: BYD's cheapest electric cars to have Lidar self-driving tech

#116

Post by vortext »

rootusrootus wrote: post #95
expedition32 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't Americans like big pickup trucks? Nobody else really drives those in large numbers.

Yes we do. We have nice big wide roads. Heck, my European immigrant friends love trucks more than natives, in my experience. If you have the space for them, there are some very appealing attributes. My Lightning will carry anything I want, tow big trailers, has huge interior space for the family, will outrun most cars (even many 'fast' ones), and is more fuel efficient than a [non-plugin] Prius. I wouldn't want to ow…

The Ford Lightning has been discontinued.

Re: BYD's cheapest electric cars to have Lidar self-driving tech

#117

Post by bluGill »

SapporoChris wrote: post #114
dzhiurgis wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can lidar say what colour is traffic light?

I believe traffic lights currently use three bulbs, red, yellow and green. Even without color a computer system can easily determine when each light is lit. If there are single bulbs displaying red, green and yellow please give clear examples.

Flashing lights over rural intersections often do that. There is only one color there (yellow or red), but position is not a signal

Re: BYD's cheapest electric cars to have Lidar self-driving tech

#118

Post by bluGill »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #109
dzhiurgis wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can lidar say what colour is traffic light?

Something I've seen noises about is time of flight systems for traffic. I think the idea is you can put those systems on traffic lights, cars, bicycles, and pedestrians and then cars can know where those things are.

You can't do that though. Someone will not wear it - and they shouldn't have to.

Re: BYD's cheapest electric cars to have Lidar self-driving tech

#119

Post by dotancohen »

teleforce wrote: post #88

Are you serious, a car with Lidar sensor that's not even available in Bugatti Tourbillon that cost 500x more? Joking aside, this BYD Seagull, or Atto 1 in Australia (AUD$24K) and Dolphin Surf in Europe (￡18K in the UK), is one the cheapest EV cars in the world and selling at around ￡6K in China. It's priced double in Australia and triple in the UK compared to its original price in China. It's also one of China best s…

I agree with every word about the BYD, in fact I just recently helped a family member buy one. But how would you pick the Austin 7 over the Model T as your example revolutionary car? Serious question, you're obviously knowledgeable if you mentioned that vehicle.

Re: BYD's cheapest electric cars to have Lidar self-driving tech

#120

Post by dzhiurgis »

SapporoChris wrote: post #114
dzhiurgis wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can lidar say what colour is traffic light?

I believe traffic lights currently use three bulbs, red, yellow and green. Even without color a computer system can easily determine when each light is lit. If there are single bulbs displaying red, green and yellow please give clear examples.

How about turn signal vs brake lights?
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