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Waymo CEO explains why Tesla’s camera-only self-driving falls short

electrek.co

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Re: Waymo CEO explains why Tesla’s camera-only self-driving falls short

#31

Post by parl_match »

Animats wrote: post #19
randyrand wrote: post #2

Right. But are $200K worth of extra sensors actually worth it or are 10+ cameras already safe enough? This article makes no attempt to answer the actual meat of the question. Ultimately, people will vote with their wallet. p.s. I wonder if you could prevent glare by placing an LCD-like device in front of the lens dynamically blocking out the sun.

LIDAR units are nowhere near that expensive. Even ten years ago, the Velodyne top of car units only cost about $80,000. The short range ones, found at vehicle corners and on the rear, are now around $200 - $1500. The long range car-top unit is still expensive, around $10,000, and that's dropping. The whole sensor suite on a Waymo is probably under US$20,000 right now. If that. The future direction for automotive seem…

Current estimates put the Ojai sensor cost between $15k and $30k. My inclination is that there is confusion between BOM and constructed cost.

Re: Waymo CEO explains why Tesla’s camera-only self-driving falls short

#32

Post by parl_match »

dgrin91 wrote: post #5
curuinor wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Article has a paragraph about how lidar is rapidly getting cheaper, so the camera comparison is only temporary Dolgov also pushed back on the one knock that camera-only fans always reach for: cost. Waymo is on its sixth generation of hardware, and he said each generation has drastically cut the price. Betting against sensors like lidar on today’s prices, he warned, means betting on “a number that has a fairly short s…

Thats the million (billion? trillion?) dollar question. Will it get cheap enough? Will it get cheap enough to put on 100 million+ vehicles and be competitive with cameras? I honestly don't know the answer, but I haven't seen strong evidence to point to yes.

> Will it get cheap enough?

An Ojai costs less than a mid tier luxury vehicle. Is that not cheap enough?

And the price is only coming down.

Re: Waymo CEO explains why Tesla’s camera-only self-driving falls short

#33

Post by HiJon89 »

> “Humans of course can drive with just eyes, so there’s that proof of existence,” he said. “If the goal were to just approximately match human performance or to build an assist product, that’s a very reasonable way to go.”

It feels like there's a lot of assumptions baked in here. For example, do humans get in accidents because eyes are insufficient driving sensors? Or because human drivers get tired, distracted, make mistakes, etc.

Also, you can put 10 cameras on a car looking in all directions at the same time, which feels materially different from a human that only has 2 eyes which can only look in a single direction at a time.

It's possible that massively superhuman driving performance can't be achieved with just cameras, but I'm not seeing a strong case for that being made here.

Re: Waymo CEO explains why Tesla’s camera-only self-driving falls short

#34

Post by swingandamiss »

xnx wrote: post #23
dgarrett wrote: post #21

I can purchase a self-driving Tesla at a reasonable price, in-line with other cars of the same class. I can't purchase a Waymo at any price.

If Teslas could self drive you could sit in the back seat, or sleep, or send the car somewhere without being in it. Elon really wants them to, but Tesla's do not self drive.

If Rivian was completely equal with Tesla at FSD, your tone would be completely different about Rivian. We understand.

Re: Waymo CEO explains why Tesla’s camera-only self-driving falls short

#35

Post by xgulfie »

vel0city wrote: post #26
dgarrett wrote: post #21

I can purchase a self-driving Tesla at a reasonable price, in-line with other cars of the same class. I can't purchase a Waymo at any price.

You can't buy a self-driving Tesla today. Even Tesla tells you that in the fine print. Its self-driving (supervised). If it was actually self driving, they wouldn't be saying (supervised).

My 2013 Prius does this too, if I let go of the wheel it goes basically straight until it needs me to take over and adjust its trajsctory

Re: Waymo CEO explains why Tesla’s camera-only self-driving falls short

#36

Post by huflungdung »

theshrike79 wrote: post #7

Lidar will give you XYZ (z = distance) on a single datapoint, cameras give you XY and you need to calculate the Z from multiple cameras. Lidar is ugly and expensive, but requires way fewer cycles to calculate distances. And it works through fog and even some obstacles, nor does it care about glare or get "scared" of shadows. If we had infinite compute in the car, cameras would be the obvious solution ...but we don't.…

[dead]

Re: Waymo CEO explains why Tesla’s camera-only self-driving falls short

#37

Post by kube-system »

dgarrett wrote: post #21

I can purchase a self-driving Tesla at a reasonable price, in-line with other cars of the same class. I can't purchase a Waymo at any price.

"FSD (Supervised)" is a marketing name... which they updated with the parenthetical almost certainly because of brewing legal issues with false advertising. It does not self-drive.

https://www.tesla.com/support/fsd#pay-attention

> FSD (Supervised) is an advanced driver assistance system that is intended to be used only with a fully attentive driver. It does not turn a Tesla into a fully autonomous vehicle.

Re: Waymo CEO explains why Tesla’s camera-only self-driving falls short

#38

Post by FireBeyond »

randyrand wrote: post #2

Right. But are $200K worth of extra sensors actually worth it or are 10+ cameras already safe enough? This article makes no attempt to answer the actual meat of the question. Ultimately, people will vote with their wallet. p.s. I wonder if you could prevent glare by placing an LCD-like device in front of the lens dynamically blocking out the sun.

> I wonder if you could prevent glare by placing an LCD-like device in front of the lens dynamically blocking out the sun.

Elon has already lied, on an investor call, about how such things are not necessary - he referenced how "Tesla cameras can count photons", as a reason why they were not affected by fog, rain, or snow.

Except, no they can't, and they never will be able to. Not the cameras in any Tesla now (and even then). It's a completely different type of camera (and it would do effectively nothing useful from a visualization perspective, let alone functional camera for human viewing). And even if they changed the camera, or added some, well, you can't count photos if you're not in an enclosed space (you know, like the open road).

This is where Elon gets really dangerous, in my mind, he knows enough to be dangerous, he knows what to say that convinces the layperson, or investor, passes the initial sniff test only to dramatically fall over when you investigate.

Re: Waymo CEO explains why Tesla’s camera-only self-driving falls short

#39

Post by AngryData »

HiJon89 wrote: post #33

> “Humans of course can drive with just eyes, so there’s that proof of existence,” he said. “If the goal were to just approximately match human performance or to build an assist product, that’s a very reasonable way to go.” It feels like there's a lot of assumptions baked in here. For example, do humans get in accidents because eyes are insufficient driving sensors? Or because human drivers get tired, distracted, mak…

Also humans can move their heads around which gives extra parralax information and thus better depth perception than two static cameras would imply.

Re: Waymo CEO explains why Tesla’s camera-only self-driving falls short

#40

Post by site-packages1 »

ls612 wrote: post #14
tqi wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Ultimately, people will vote with their wallet" Seems like a bad way to legislate this, since everyone else on the roads pays the price for cut rate self driving

If 2x Mk 1 eyeballs are good enough then I figure cameras can get there too. Or are we going to outlaw that as well because of competitive incentives of Waymo?

Hi, Elon! Big fan of the Wiki page about your list of predictions for autonomous driving: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_predictions_for_autono...
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