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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

#291

Post by ActorNightly »

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…

Everyone is missing the point, including Karpathy which is the most surprising because he is supposed to be one of the smart ones.

The focus shouldn't be on which sensor to use. If you are going to use humans as examples, just take the time to think how a human drives. We can drive with one eye. We can drive with a screen instead of a windshield. We can drive with a wiremesh representation of the world. We also use audio signals quite a bit when when driving as well.

The way to build a self driving suite is start with the software that builds your representation of the world first. Then any sensor you add in is a fairly trivial problem of sensor fusion + Kalman filtering. That way, as certain tech gets cheaper or better or more expensive and worse, you can just easily swap in what you need to achieve x degree of accuracy.

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

#292

Post by afpx »

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…

Could you even manufacture Austin 7 at scale today for less than a Seagull?

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

#293

Post by comfysocks »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #121
pyrolistical wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not either lifar or regular cameras. Use both and combine the information to exceed the humans

What proportion is camera data and what is LIDAR? Must be solved problem and something you should buy already? Right?

Most practical navigation systems employ some form of sensor fusion. It’s more the norm than not. I’m sure even Tesla’s FSD does too for fusing vision, inertial sensors, wheel speed, multiple etc.

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

#294

Post by pests »

FireBeyond wrote: post #277
pests wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

My (non-electric) car will do 0-60mph in 3.3 seconds. The number of times I need to do this in daily driving is approximately zero.

3.3 is pretty quick compared to 13. Its quicker than the 0-30 I listed above.

Maybe you don't 0-60 often, but 0-30 has to be a bit more common?

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

#295

Post by comfysocks »

pkulak wrote: post #161
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…

I hate the guy, but I get the decision. A point cloud has a ceiling that the visible spectrum doesn’t, evidenced by our lack of lidar.

Yes lidar has limitations, but so does machine vision. That’s why you want both if you can have it. LIDAR is more reliable at judging distance than stereo vision. Stereo vision requires there to be sufficient texture (features) to work. It can be thrown off by fog or glare. A white semi trailer can be a degenerate case. It can be fooled by optical illusions.

Yes, humans don’t have built in lidar. But humans do use tools to augment their capabilities. The car itself is one example. Birds don’t have jet engines, props, or rotors… should we not use those?

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

#296

Post by senti_sentient »

archagon wrote: post #225
senti_sentient wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had family friends visiting Australia from USA and they were surprised by the sheer number and varieties of Chinese cars on our roads. I too have a BYD Dolphin and Shark, they loved them and felt they’re missing out big time on this. Mind you we have lots of Teslas on the roads as well, but they are bleeding their lead.

How’s the charging infrastructure these days?

It’s improving in Australia, but no where near where it needs to be.

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

#298

Post by senti_sentient »

wtcactus wrote: post #234

My present car is 18 years (and, other than 2 non functioning buttons that I decided I didn’t want to pay to replace), working perfectly fine. And, I should say, I’m a terrible owner. This car had (at most) 10 maintenance checks (and oil changes) in its life. Emphasis in “at most”. I intend to buy a new one in about 3 years and there’s no chance in hell I’m going for something shiny that breaks after 5 years like thi…

Chinese cars have come a long way, most of them have better quality than any European maker. And almost of them come with very long warranty periods as well. Go take a test drive in one to find out what you been missing out on.

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

#299

Post by comfysocks »

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?

Since the current traffic infrastructure was built for human drivers with vision, you’ll probably need some form of vision to navigate today’s roads. The only way I could picture lidar only working would be on a road system specially made for machine driving.

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

#300

Post by olyjohn »

mrtksn wrote: post #53
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…

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…

There are regular 100+ car pileups in the central California valley due to fog. Cars crash in a lot of situations because the driver simply can't see. We need something better than vision to avoid these kinds of accidents.

Coordinated cars won't work unless all cars are built the same and all maintained 100% the same and regularly inspected. You can't have a car driving 2 inches from the car in front, if it can't stop just as fast as the car in front. People already neglect their cars, change brake compounds, and get stuck purchasing low quality brake parts due to lack of availability of good components.

Next time you see some total beater driving down the road, imagine that car 2 inches off your rear bumper, not even a computer can make up for poor maintenance. Imagine that 8000lb pickup with it's cheap oversized tires right in your rearview mirror with it's headlights in your face. It's not going to be able to stop either.

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