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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

#261

Post by dham »

cyberax wrote: post #241
dham wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you talking hw3 or 4? Also, the e2e FSD is recent. And FSD has gotten really good since 13, and with 14 it's really, really good. Not sure what 2015 has to do with anything. Red hands of death would be sunglare due to your windshield not being clean. I haven't had red hands since 14 came out.

Both HW versions have problems (and I have both). FSD has been "really good since VVV" for the last 6 major versions or so. > Red hands of death would be sunglare due to your windshield not being clean. I haven't had red hands since 14 came out. My windshield is completely normal. Not unusually dirty or anything. It's also Seattle. What is the "sunglare"?

> FSD has been "really good since VVV"

These are influencers who have a stake in Tesla. The general consensus from the regular users is that it is really good starting at FSD 14. It's the first version that finally feels complete. I have 5000 miles on FSD 14 with no disengagements. 99% of my driving is FSD. I couldn't say that for any other version. Even my wife has 85% of her driving on FSD and she hated it before. She just tends to drive herself on short drives and in parkings lots, where as I don't. So your take just doens't line up with what people are saying in social media and my personal experience.

> My windshield is completely normal

If it's never been cleaned from the inside, it's a good chance it's not. The off-gassing from new cars causes fog on the inside of the windshield in front of the camera. It might behave ok (or wierd) but when sun hits it you get red hands of death.

You need to clean it yourself or have Tesla do it. They offer it for free. I did mine following this video and it wasn't bad if you have the right tool. After I did this things were completely fine in low direct sun.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwiMCIxYFXM

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

#262

Post by dham »

imtringued wrote: post #239
cyberax wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Links? The most recent one is: https://media.mbusa.com/releases/release-4889b1d1c66cddc7120...

They canceled the Drive Pilot L3, which is fully autonomous with zero driver intervention (approved by the government), because the software isn't there yet due to the hand off problem. They are still working on making it work at 130km/h on the highways. The problem with a zero driver intervention system is that the driver isn't guaranteed to pay attention when the mode is no longer applicable and the mode switch is…

> I'm not talking about some Tesla style last second bullshit where you're supposed to compensate for the deficiencies of the system that supposedly can do the full journey.

Interesting because that's just not my experience at all and a lot of other users.

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

#263

Post by dotancohen »

teleforce wrote: post #169
dotancohen wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can check the video on the early generation cars reviewed by the famous Top Gear team members [1]. Austin 7 and its derivatives (notably Dixi that kickstarted the highly successful BMW car business), dictated and popularized the modern car architecture, interfaces and controls stereotype as we know today. In order to drive old cars prior to Austin 7, we probably need a manual before we can drive them except the C…

Jaguar only started using a synchromesh gearbox in the E-Type in '65 or '66 (Series II) - that's forty years after the Austin. I have no idea why the British love to abuse themselves.

Last week I saw some old Rolls Royce that I absolutely could not guess even the decade of. The carriage looked 1930s but the interior looked 1950s - until I noticed what might have been spark advance levers on the steering wheel. It's a super luxury vehicle with super conservative styling, so I really don't know if it had a luxury interior for it's time or a classic exterior for it's time.

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

#264

Post by lkois »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #229
lkois wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by proportion? They are different data sources, and their usage is determined by system design. eg A driving decision system needs to know object distances AND traffic light colours. It doesn't particularly need to know the source of either. You could have a camera-only system that accurately determines colour and fuzzy-determines distance. Or you could have a LIDAR-only system that accurately determ…

Sounds like a solved problem and you can buy a solution with a perfect accuracy?

Who said that?

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

#265

Post by Nasrudith »

gbnwl wrote: post #137
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…

Sorry if this is obvious, but are there actually any systems that "choose one over the other"? My impression's always been it was either vision + LIDAR, or vision alone. Are there any examples of LIDAR alone?

Don't ultimately even the ones which are vision + LIDAR ultimately have to choose priority in terms of one or the other for "What do you do if LIDAR says it is blocked and sight says it is clear' or visa-versa?" Trying to handle edge-cases where say LIDAR thinks that sprinker mist is a solid object and to swerve to avoid it and say vision which thinks that an optical illusion is a real path and not a brick wall.

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

#266

Post by Yizahi »

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.

To be frank, no one had a crystal ball back then, and stuff could go either way with uncertainty in both hardware and software capabilities. Sure Lidars were better even back then, but the bet was on catching up on them.

I hate Elon's personality and political activity as much as anyone, but it is clear from technical PoV that he did logical things. Actually, the fact that he was mistaken and still managed to not bankrupt Tesla is saying something about his skills.

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

#267

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

fuzzythinker wrote: post #218
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…

It wasn't ill timed. Any sane leader would understand both size and cost of tech always comes down rather quickly over time. He's just refused to accept having lidar uglify his cars or wait for it to get smaller. He instead fabricates about humans don't have lidars so cars shouldn't have them and sold "no lidars on Teslas" as an advantage instead of the opposite and refuses to accept the truth due to needing to feed…

That always struck me as a weak argument. Humans don't have wheels, so maybe he should have designed cars without wheels too.

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

#268

Post by hbs18 »

wolvoleo wrote: post #257
rafabulsing wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I used to think like that before I started driving, it's way more structured and harder to screw up than you'd think.

Avoiding potholes is the hardest part of driving, really.

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

#269

Post by bluGill »

ben_w wrote: post #248
imtringued wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of self driving is that the car is in control. Are you going to send the car to car prison?

Personally, I'd argue that if the AI killed someone due to being incompetent (as in, a human in a fit state to drive would not have made this mistake), the punishment should go to the corporation that signed off on the AI passing all relevant tests. The nature of the punishment does not necessarily follow the same rules as for human incompetence, e.g. if the error occurs due to some surprising combination of circumst…

Let me re-iterate my original caution: human drivers are really bad: more than 40,000 people die in car crashes every year! If a self driving cars makes mistakes that humans would not in some cases, but overall they would only cause 30,000 deaths per year then I want self driving required. Thus I want liability to reflect not perfection is required but that they are better than humans.

Don't get me wrong, perfection should be the long term goal. However I will settle for less than perfection today so long as it is better.

Though better is itself hard to figure out - drunk (or otherwise impaired drivers) are a significant factor in car deaths, as is bad weather when self driving currently doesn't operate at all. Statistics do need to make sure self driving cars are better than non-impaired drivers in all situations where humans driver before they can claim better. (I know some data is collected, but so far I haven't seen any independent analysis. The potentially biased analysis looks good though - but again it is missing all weather conditions)

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

#270

Post by potamic »

pjc50 wrote: post #81
neilv wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if the real world safety data over time is... secret retinal damage to millions of walkers and runners, with symptoms attributed to Covid mysteries (and not obviously due to vision), and it takes years more before someone happens to get enough data, and does the right study analysis, and then there's industry with strong incentive not to be on the hook for blinding millions of people? If the tech industry has ta…

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.

There have been reports of lidar damaging camera sensors. If it can damage sensors, it can damage retina. And unlike the sun, it's not visible. Someone could stare straight into it for a good while and not realize.
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