Sub-$200 Lidar could reshuffle auto sensor economics • Hacker News Board

Re: Sub-$200 Lidar could reshuffle auto sensor economics

#381

Post by Aperocky » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 4:54 PM UTC

Zigurd wrote: post #268

Before y'all say that now everyone will be able to get Waymo's sensor suite for hundreds of dollars instead of tens of thousands, that's the easy part. Waymo benefits from Google's unparalleled geospatial data. Waymo also has a support architecture that doesn't depend on real time remote operation, which can't be implemented reliably in almost all cases. You can't be following your supposedly unsupervised cars with a…

> difference between suborbital flight and putting a payload in orbit. What looks like a next logical step actually takes 10X or more effort, scale, and testing.

But suborbital flight and payload in orbit is much less of a difference than you might think.

The delta V is not that significantly different. Scale is almost the same, and a little bit more power and (second stage) your payload is now hurtling around the earth instead of falling like an ballistic missile which was what their suborbital predecessors are.

Re: Sub-$200 Lidar could reshuffle auto sensor economics

#382

Post by runjake » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 4:55 PM UTC

AnotherGoodName wrote: post #338

runjake wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Karpathy provided additional context on the removal of LiDAR during his Lex Fridman Podcast appearance. This article condenses what he said: https://archive.is/PPiVG And here's one of Elon's mentions (he also has talked about it quite a bit in various spots). https://xcancel.com/elonmusk/status/1959831831668228450?s=20 Edit: My personal view is that LiDAR and other sensors are extremely useful, but I worked on aircra…

The points linked repeatedly focus on cost and complexity as justification, even explicitly stating musks desire to minimise components in Kaparthy’s list. They don’t focus on safety or effectiveness except to say that vision should be ‘sufficient’. Which is damning with faint praise imho. If that link was to try and argue that the removal of sensors makes perfect sense i have to point out that anyone that reads that…

To be clear, from a personal standpoint, I am pro-more sensors and sensor fusion.

I assume Musk, et al are acting in best faith in trying to find the right compromises.

Re: Sub-$200 Lidar could reshuffle auto sensor economics

#383

Post by dymk » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 4:55 PM UTC

Someone wrote: post #167

zelphirkalt wrote: post #119

Since lidar has distance information and cameras do not, it was always a ridiculous idea by a certain company to use cameras only. Lidar using cars are going to replace at least the ones that don't make use of this obvious answer to obstacle detection challenges.

> Since lidar has distance information and cameras do not, it was always a ridiculous idea by a certain company to use cameras only Human eyes do not have distance information, either, but derive it well enough from spatial (by ‘comparing’ inputs from 2 eyes) or temporal parallax (by ‘comparing’ inputs from one eye at different points in time) to drive cars. One can also argue that detecting absolute distance isn’t n…

> Human eyes do not have distance information

Single human eyes do resolve depth perception. Not as good as binocular vision, but you don't loose all depth perception of you lose an eye.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monocular_vision

Re: Sub-$200 Lidar could reshuffle auto sensor economics

#384

Post by toss1 » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 4:56 PM UTC

sroussey wrote: post #355

xp84 wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not disagreeing with what you’re saying, but does Alphabet actually intend Waymo to be a trillion dollar retail car business itself, selling cars to everyone? Or would they be happy to sell all those super cool things to OEMs? In a world where “everyone” can make a car affordable that can run Waymo’s software, they may be happy to license all that to “everyone” and simply collect fat royalty checks, à la Microsof…

Why sell cars to everyone? People on here used to buy servers themselves (very few of us still do), most now rent via cloud. Why should transportation be different?

>>Why should transportation be different?

Good question, and for many it will not be, and rentals are acceptable.

But also for many, renting a car has a huge ICK factor. It is one thing while traveling to rent from an agency who has (purportedly) thoroughly cleaned and inspected the car before you get it. It would be quite another to rent cars like scooters, where the previous user likely smoked, left wrappers and food debris, and who knows what else, even damage. Plus, most people who own cars keep a fair amount of stuff in the car for their specific convenience, and have their own settings, etc.

The fact that the likes of Zipcar, Turo, and the lot have not entirely taken over urban transport but instead remain niche players shows the extent of this preference.

For suburban and rural markets, it just gets more extreme. How quickly could a rental service be able to deliver a car; could it reliably do it in less than 5-10 minutes for people to run an errand? If not, unless they are insanely cheap, ppl will likely want to own their own. Perhaps it'll be more of a hybrid, households owning one car and renting the spare for specific trips?

Re: Sub-$200 Lidar could reshuffle auto sensor economics

#385

Post by mapt » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 4:57 PM UTC

Aperocky wrote: post #381

Zigurd wrote: post #268

Before y'all say that now everyone will be able to get Waymo's sensor suite for hundreds of dollars instead of tens of thousands, that's the easy part. Waymo benefits from Google's unparalleled geospatial data. Waymo also has a support architecture that doesn't depend on real time remote operation, which can't be implemented reliably in almost all cases. You can't be following your supposedly unsupervised cars with a…

> difference between suborbital flight and putting a payload in orbit. What looks like a next logical step actually takes 10X or more effort, scale, and testing. But suborbital flight and payload in orbit is much less of a difference than you might think. The delta V is not that significantly different. Scale is almost the same, and a little bit more power and (second stage) your payload is now hurtling around the ea…

Suborbital ballistic "travel" beyond continental distances, is almost as expensive as orbital. If you can make it to the antipode, you're basically almost orbital.

Suborbital "trips" straight up, beyond the atmosphere, are very cheap.

Re: Sub-$200 Lidar could reshuffle auto sensor economics

#386

Post by brandonagr2 » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 4:59 PM UTC

KaiserPro wrote: post #55

small_model wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, silly using just cameras, I mean humans have Lidar sensors, that why they can drive, why didn't new just copy that....oh wait. It all seriousness though, Tesla are producing cyber cabs now which are 10th the price of Waymo's and can drive autonomously anywhere in the world. I think we can see where this is going. (Hint: not well for Waymo) Also the article is speculative 'MicroVision says its sensor could one da…

> Tesla are producing cyber cabs now which are 10th the price of Waymo's and can drive autonomously anywhere in the world. Wait what? when did they actually enter mass production? > I mean humans have Lidar sensors Real time slam is actually pretty good, the hard part is reliable object detection using just vision. Tesla's forward facing cameras are effectively monocular, which means that its much much harder to get…

Not mass production yet, but the first one rolled off the completed assembly line at giga texas last week

Sensor fusion is not far simpler, when the sensors disagree, and they will often, you have to pick which to trust.

It is amazing to see how many people here are confident they know the one true way to build autonomous systems based on nothing but wanting to confirm their biases

Re: Sub-$200 Lidar could reshuffle auto sensor economics

#387

Post by brandonagr2 » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 5:00 PM UTC

shawabawa3 wrote: post #49

small_model wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, silly using just cameras, I mean humans have Lidar sensors, that why they can drive, why didn't new just copy that....oh wait. It all seriousness though, Tesla are producing cyber cabs now which are 10th the price of Waymo's and can drive autonomously anywhere in the world. I think we can see where this is going. (Hint: not well for Waymo) Also the article is speculative 'MicroVision says its sensor could one da…

> Tesla are producing cyber cabs now which are 10th the price of Waymo's and can drive autonomously anywhere in the world. My understanding is that cyber cabs still need safety drivers to operate, is that not the case?

Robotaxis in Austin are in the process of removing in car safety monitors, there is a chance you would get one today

Re: Sub-$200 Lidar could reshuffle auto sensor economics

#388

Post by xbmcuser » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 5:01 PM UTC

xp84 wrote: post #306

Zigurd wrote: post #268

Before y'all say that now everyone will be able to get Waymo's sensor suite for hundreds of dollars instead of tens of thousands, that's the easy part. Waymo benefits from Google's unparalleled geospatial data. Waymo also has a support architecture that doesn't depend on real time remote operation, which can't be implemented reliably in almost all cases. You can't be following your supposedly unsupervised cars with a…

I’m not disagreeing with what you’re saying, but does Alphabet actually intend Waymo to be a trillion dollar retail car business itself, selling cars to everyone? Or would they be happy to sell all those super cool things to OEMs? In a world where “everyone” can make a car affordable that can run Waymo’s software, they may be happy to license all that to “everyone” and simply collect fat royalty checks, à la Microsof…

With the price declines in ev we are talking about 1 million ev even with all the waymo tech for $50 billion soon. approximate Annual Revenue of a private hire car is $50+k ie $50-60 billion a year for a million cars. But total taxi driver population is 350-400k in the US. I think people are underestimating the electric tech + ai/automation to hit soon.

Re: Sub-$200 Lidar could reshuffle auto sensor economics

#389

Post by s08148692 » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 5:02 PM UTC

KaiserPro wrote: post #55

small_model wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, silly using just cameras, I mean humans have Lidar sensors, that why they can drive, why didn't new just copy that....oh wait. It all seriousness though, Tesla are producing cyber cabs now which are 10th the price of Waymo's and can drive autonomously anywhere in the world. I think we can see where this is going. (Hint: not well for Waymo) Also the article is speculative 'MicroVision says its sensor could one da…

> Tesla are producing cyber cabs now which are 10th the price of Waymo's and can drive autonomously anywhere in the world. Wait what? when did they actually enter mass production? > I mean humans have Lidar sensors Real time slam is actually pretty good, the hard part is reliable object detection using just vision. Tesla's forward facing cameras are effectively monocular, which means that its much much harder to get…

> Wait what? when did they actually enter mass production?

"mass" is a strong word but the first one came off their production line 5 days ago

ramp to high volume will probably be extremely slow

Re: Sub-$200 Lidar could reshuffle auto sensor economics

#390

Post by nindalf » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 5:03 PM UTC

atonse wrote: post #347

willio58 wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on that list it boils down to 2 things it seems: - cost (no longer a problem) - too much code needed and it bloats the data pipelines. Does anyone have any actual evidence of this being the case? Like yes, code would be needed, but why is that innately a bad thing? Bloated data pipelines feels like another hand-wave when I think if you do it right it’s fine. As proven by Waymo. Really curious if any Tesla engin…

Just for the record though, Musk isn't blindly anti-LIDAR. He has said (and I think this is an objective fact) that all existing roads and driving are based on vision (which is what all humans do). So that should technically be sufficient. SpaceX uses LIDAR for their docking systems. I would argue that yes, we do use vision but we get that "lidar depth" from our stereo vision. And that used to be why I thought camera…

> So that should technically be sufficient

Sufficient to build something close to human performance. But self driving cars will be held to a much higher standard by society. A standard only achievable by having sensors like LiDAR.