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

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

#251

Post by cameronh90 »

cpgxiii wrote: post #145
cameronh90 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have to choose one over the other, it has to be vision surely? Even ignoring various current issues with Lidar systems that aren’t fundamental limitations, large amounts of road infrastructure is just designed around vision and will continue to be for at least another few decades. Lidar just fundamentally can’t read signs, traffic lights or road markings in a reliable way. Personally I don’t buy the argument t…

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…

I was responding to the parent who said if you had to make a choice between lidar and vision, you'd pick lidar.

I know there are theoretical and semi-practical ways of reading those indicators with features that are correlated with the visual data, for example thermoplastic line markings create a small bump that sufficiently advanced lidar can detect. However, while I'm not a lidar expert, I don't believe using a completely different physical mechanism to read that data will be reliable. It will surely inevitably lead to situations where a human detects something that a lidar doesn't, and vice versa, just due to fundamental differences in how the two mechanisms work.

For example, you could imagine a situation where the white lane divider thermoplastic markings on a road has been masked over with black paint and new lane markings have been painted on - but lidar will still detect the bump as a stronger signal than the new paint markings.

Ideally while humans and self driving coexist on the same roads, we need to do our best to keep the behaviour of the sensors to be as close to how a human would interpret the conditions. Where human driving is no longer a concern, lidar could potentially be a better option for the primary sensor.

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

#252

Post by throw20251220 »

sroussey wrote: post #192
brightball wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there’s room for both points of view here. Going all in on visual processing means you can use it anywhere a person can go in any other technology, Optimus robots are just one example. And he’s not wrong that roads and driving laws are all built around human visual processing. The recent example of a power outage in SF where lidar powered Waymo’s all stopped working when the traffic lights were out and Tesla…

> roads and driving laws are all built around human visual processing. And people die all the time. > The recent example of a power outage in SF where lidar powered Waymo’s all stopped working when the traffic lights were out and Tesla self driving continued operating normally makes a good case for the approach. Huh? Waymo is responsible for injury, so all their cars called home at the same time DOS themselves rather…

> And people die all the time.

Most of them cannot drive a car. People have crashes for so many reasons.

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

#253

Post by blitzar »

sampo wrote: post #156
ares623 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Roombas

Roomba (specifically the brand of the American company iRobot) only added lidar in 2025 [1]. Earliest Roombas navigated by touch (bumping into walls), and then by cameras. But if you use "roomba" as a generic term for robot vacuum then yes, Chinese Ecovacs and Xiaomi introduced lidar-based robot vacuums in 2015 [2]. [1] https://www.theverge.com/news/627751/irobot-launches-eight-n... [2] https://english.cw.com.tw/arti…

> Earliest Roombas navigated by touch (bumping into walls)

My neighbour used to park like that; "thats what the bumpers are for - bumping"

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

#254

Post by mft_ »

spiderfarmer wrote: post #148
mft_ wrote: post #87

Earlier 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.

> 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.

History is replete with smart people making bad decisions. Someone can be exceptionally smart (in some domains) and have made a bad decision.

> He seemed to have drank his own koolaid back then.

Indeed; but he was on a run of success, based on repeatedly succeeding deliberately against established expertise, so I imagine that Koolaid was pretty compelling.

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

#255

Post by brightball »

NewJazz wrote: post #190
brightball wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there’s room for both points of view here. Going all in on visual processing means you can use it anywhere a person can go in any other technology, Optimus robots are just one example. And he’s not wrong that roads and driving laws are all built around human visual processing. The recent example of a power outage in SF where lidar powered Waymo’s all stopped working when the traffic lights were out and Tesla…

Didn't waymo stop operating simply because they aren't as cavalier as Tesla, and they have much more to lose since they are actually self driving instead of just driver assistance? Was the lidar/vision difference actually significant?

The reports I’ve read said that some continued to attempt to navigate with the street lights out, but that the vehicles all have a remote confirmation where they try to call home to confirm what to do. That ended up self DDoSing Waymo causing vehicles to stop in the middle of the road and at intersections with their hazards on.

So to clarify, it wasn’t entirely a lidar problem it was an need to call home to navigate.

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

#256

Post by leobg »

senti_sentient wrote: post #3
cadamsdotcom wrote: post #2

Disruption at its finest :)

Someone said that LiDAR is too expensive, camera is better :)

That isn’t the point. The point is that it’s not enough to figure out that there is an obstacle. You also have to figure out what that obstacle is, and you have to predict its movement. In the case of pedestrian, the car, for example, needs to know whether the pedestrian has seen you. Things like that you just cannot do with LiDAR. Hence you’re gonna need cameras anyway. Hence tge “anyone relying on LiDAR is doomed” prediction.

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

#257

Post by wolvoleo »

rafabulsing wrote: post #126
mrtksn wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if ubiquity doesn’t effect the lidar performance? Wouldn’t the systems see each other’s laser projections if there are multiple cars close to each other? Also is LIDAR immune to other issues like bright 3rd party sources? At least on iPhone I’m having faceid performance degradation. Also, I suspect other issues like thin or transparent objects net being detected. With vision you rely on external source or fl…

I'm not a self-driving believer (never had the opportunity to try it, actually), but I'd say bad traffic would be the number one case where I'd want it. I don't mind highway driving, or city driving if traffic is good, but stop and go traffic is torture to me. I'd much rather just be on my phone, or read a book or something. Agreed that public transportation is usually the best option in either case, though.

To me any kind of driving is torture. I don't want the responsibility, the risk, the chance of fines if I miss a speed sign somewhere. And if my car could self drive I could spend the time usefully instead of wasting it on driving. It would be amazing.

Right now I don't even have a car but for getting around outside of the city it's difficult sometimes.

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

#258

Post by setr »

energy123 wrote: post #153
cpgxiii wrote: post #145

Earlier 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…

Isn’t that also like having two watches? You’ll never know the time

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

#259

Post by SideQuark »

VerifiedReports wrote: post #125

How do we know that all these lasers aren't harming people's eyes?

Because we have science. Laser frequency, power, and pulse length, among other things, are chosen to be eye safe. You’ll get far more energy dumped into your eye from a blue sky.

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

#260

Post by VladVladikoff »

rootusrootus wrote: post #182
VladVladikoff wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not even the worst part. Imagine owning a car that has $7000 DRM tail light units if you need to replace one?

> $7000 DRM tail light units What car has that? Please do not spread misinformation. The Lightning taillights are expensive, a couple grand directly from Ford, primarily because of the integrated blind spot radar. That is the part that needs to be re-paired to the truck if you replace it, the taillights themselves are same as they ever were. Most of the time when someone breaks a taillight they just grab one from eBa…

My buddy who owns a lightning told me this story first hand. Perhaps he was exaggerating. His taillight got smashed, so this price was for the full unit not just the bulb.
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