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…
> claimed 0–50 km/h (31 mph) acceleration time of 4.9 seconds,[45] and a 0–100 km/h (62 mph) time of 13 seconds. Aww
BYD's cheapest electric cars to have Lidar self-driving tech
211–220 of 340 posts
Re: BYD's cheapest electric cars to have Lidar self-driving tech
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
Curious how you only ask this to people who claim Teslas are bad and not to people who claim Teslas are good.
Any claims I care to learn about I would like evidence. Only anti-Tesla folks seem to be lacking it.
They might get better but how is that not evidence enough that currently Robotaxis are behind Waymos in self driving capabilities?
Re: BYD's cheapest electric cars to have Lidar self-driving tech
#213But assistive devices are well embedded. reversing tones. rear vision cameras.
So, adding something which can do side knock, pavement risk, sideswipe, blind spot, or 'pace to car in front' type stuff is a bit obvious if you ask me, and if it's optional, then all I want is the minimal wiring harness cost amortized out so retrofit isn't too hard.
I hope BYD also continues to do "real switches" and "smaller TV dashboard" choices because I'm not a fan of touch screen, and large screen.
Re: BYD's cheapest electric cars to have Lidar self-driving tech
#214How much "connected" are BYD cars, in terms of sending drivers' data to their Chinese mothership?
Re: BYD's cheapest electric cars to have Lidar self-driving tech
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can think of one example where something similar works. The requirements from insurance companies on airline pilots are considerable tougher than the government ones because they are on the hook for ~$200m if they crash. A big reason car companies don't worry much about killing pedestrians at the moment is it costs them ~$0.
You clearly haven't lived in my city :). About half our road fatalities are pedestrians. About 80% of those are intoxicated with alcohol. When you're driving at 40mph, at night, and some drunk guy chooses to cross the road, no amount of safety features or liabilities can save him. Sure, cars can be safer for light collisions with pedestrians where the car is going slowly. Especially in the US where half the cars have…
Here in the UK we have a standard 30mph built up area limit, dropping to 20mph in most residential area.
Result - a massive reduction in serious injuries and fatalities, especially in car - pedestrians collisions.
Re: BYD's cheapest electric cars to have Lidar self-driving tech
#216Keep 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.
US manufacturers are going to be ok as long as there are policies banning foreign cars and there are tariffs, which is going to be true for a long time. And somehow US consumers feel comfortable paying more for worse cars.
It's baffling and a complete self goal.
The GMC dealership near me is spilling full-size++ pick-ups and enormous Suburban/Tahoe/whatevers out of it's lot and onto the grass. The average sticker is ~$48K/~$750 per month and, depending on driving habits, it can cost hundreds of dollars per week to run these vehicles. That's to say nothing of insurance, maintenance and the cost of replacing those monster truck tires every 2-3 years.
Compare all that to a BYD you could realistically buy outright for $10-15K and charge in your driveway every night.
Re: BYD's cheapest electric cars to have Lidar self-driving tech
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
Given a good proportion of his success has rested on somehow simplifying or commodifying existing expensive technology (e.g. rockets, and lots of the technology needed to make them; EV batteries) it's surprising that Musk's response to lidar being (at the time) very expensive was to avoid it despite the additional challenges that this brought, rather than attempt to carve a moat by innovating and creating cheaper and…
The ways in which Musk dug himself in when experts predicted this exact scenario confirmed to me he was not as smart as some people think he was. He seemed to have drank his own koolaid back then. And if he still doesn’t realize and admit he is wrong then he is just plain dumb. Pride is standing in the way of first principles.
This had happened a load of times with him. It seemed to ramp up around paedo sub, and I wonder what went on with him at that time.
Re: BYD's cheapest electric cars to have Lidar self-driving tech
#218Lidars 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…
Re: BYD's cheapest electric cars to have Lidar self-driving tech
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
For one, no one is seriously contemplating a LIDAR-only system, the question is between camera+LIDAR or camera-only. > Lidar just fundamentally can’t read signs, traffic lights or road markings in a reliable way. Actually, given that basically every meaningful LIDAR on the market gives an "intensity" value for each return, in surprisingly many cases you could get this kind of imaging behavior from LIDAR so long as th…
> camera+LIDAR It's like having 2 pilots instead of 1 pilot. If one pilot is unexpectedly defective (has a heart attack mid-flight), you still have the other pilot. Some errors between the 2 pilots aren't uncorrelated of course, but many of them are. So the chance of an at-fault crash goes from p and approaches p^2 in the best case. That's an unintuitively large improvement. Many laypeople's gut instinct would be mor…
Re: BYD's cheapest electric cars to have Lidar self-driving tech
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
You clearly haven't lived in my city :). About half our road fatalities are pedestrians. About 80% of those are intoxicated with alcohol. When you're driving at 40mph, at night, and some drunk guy chooses to cross the road, no amount of safety features or liabilities can save him. Sure, cars can be safer for light collisions with pedestrians where the car is going slowly. Especially in the US where half the cars have…
Why are you doing 40mph in a built up area at night? Here in the UK we have a standard 30mph built up area limit, dropping to 20mph in most residential area. Result - a massive reduction in serious injuries and fatalities, especially in car - pedestrians collisions.