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Sub-$200 Lidar could reshuffle auto sensor economics

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

#401

Post by hermanzegerman »

brandonagr2 wrote: post #387
shawabawa3 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

They are just moving the safety monitor in a car that drives behind you.

https://electrek.co/2026/01/22/tesla-didnt-remove-the-robota...

It would be funny, but tbh it's just sad.

Everything for the stock pump

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

#402

Post by lazide »

MengerSponge wrote: post #341
ubercore wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My Tesla can't even tell if it should turn the wipers on consistently or correctly. Let alone drive in the rain.

Seriously. Why do people think a company that can't do automatic wipers could possibly do automatic driving?

The same people that seriously thought we’d have a mars base by now.

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

#403

Post by sroussey »

b8 wrote: post #354

I still believe in Cameras. I have a comma.ai 3x and it works really well. Just get a thermal camera to deal with fog etc. Waymo has some of the same limitations with cameras that Comma and Tesla does.

Same limitations as radar and ultrasonic and ladar and vision cameras combined?

Even Tesla used to have radar and ultrasonic in their cars until relatively recently. And they use lidar (from Luminar) in their mapping fleet.

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

#404

Post by lesuorac »

galangalalgol wrote: post #143
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.

The reasoning is cynical but sound. If the system uses only the sensing modes people have, it will make the mistakes people do. If a jury thinks "well I could have done that either!" You win. It doesn't matter if your system has fewer accidents if some of the failure modes are different than human ones, because the jury will think "how could it not figure that out?"

IIUC, the cameras in a Tesla have worse vision (resolution) at far distances than a human. So while in the abstract your argument sounds fine; it'll crumble in court when a lawyer points out a similar driver would've needed corrective lens.

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

#405

Post by mrguyorama »

philistine wrote: post #320
nlitened wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I understand, lidars don't work well in rain/snow/fog. So in the real world, where you have limited resources (research and production investment, people talent, AI training time and dataset breadth, power consumption) that you could redistribute between two systems (vision and lidar), but one of the systems would contradict the other in dangerous driving conditions — it's smarter to just max out vision and ignore…

Why does that strategy absolutely require the lidar to be absent from the car? When was less technology the solution to a software problem?

People who don't understand that sensor fusion is an entire field of study with tons of existing work and lots of expertise have been fooled by a fake argument of "If the camera and lidar disagree, what do you do?"

It's frustrating to still see it repeated over a decade later. It was always bullshit. It was always a lie.

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

#406

Post by kjkjadksj »

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?

Moores law applies to cpus not the car that has been functionally the same for decades.

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

#408

Post by kube-system »

dymk wrote: post #378
atonse wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Humans aren't using only fixed vision for driving. This is such a tiresome thing to see repeated in every discussion about self driving. You're listening to the road and car sounds around you. You're feeling vibration on the road. You're feeling feedback on the steering wheel. You're using a combination of monocular and binocular depth perception - plus, your eyes are not a fixed focal length "cameras". You're moving…

And also, even with the suite of sensors that humans have, their vision perception is frequently inadequate and leads to crashes. If vision was good enough, "SMIDSY" wouldn't be such an infamous acronym in vehicle injury cases.

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

#409

Post by nateb2022 »

Low cost, sub $200 automotive grade LIDAR sensors are already available.

Cepton Technologies offers Nova [0], Nova-Ultra [1] sensors both at a sub-$100 price point [2]. These feature a 120°(H) x 90°(V) FOV at 50m, with 2.7M points per second sampling.

Velodyne introduced Velabit in 2021, for $100. Boasting 100m range and a 60-degree horizontal FoV x 10-degree vertical FoV.

The article claims that:

> What distinguishes current claims is the explicit focus on sub-$200 pricing tied to production volume rather than future prototypes or limited pilot runs.

which is simply not true. Cepton (currently offering) and Velodyne (acquired by Ouster in 2023) have done this for years.

  [0]: https://www.cepton.com/products/nova
  [1]: https://www.cepton.com/products/nova-ultra
  [2]: https://www.cepton.com/announcements/ceptons-nova-lidar-named-as-ces-2022-innovation-awards-honoree
  [3]: https://lidarmag.com/2020/01/07/velodyne-lidar-introduces-velabit/

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

#410

Post by tk781 »

tw04 wrote: post #240
nlitened wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your vision is good enough to drive in rain/snow/fog, you don't need lidar in clear conditions. If you planned to spend $10B on vision and $10B on lidar — you would be better off spending $20B on better vision.

We have actual proof this isn’t true. Waymo is light years ahead of Tesla despite spending less. Tesla is spending upwards of $6B/year to Waymo’s $1.5B. Only one of these companies makes an autonomous robotaxi that’s actually autonomous.

Yes, but how much of that is due to the lidar vs camera choice?
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