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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

#51

Post by cyberax »

ronnier wrote: post #27
cyberax wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. And Tesla doesn't have robotaxis at all, they're still playing in the kindergarten league. So Tesla is in a weird state right now. Tesla's highway assist is shit, it's worse than Mercedes previous generation assist after Tesla switched to the end-to-end neural networks. The new MB.Drive Assist Pro is apparently even better. FSD attempts to work in cities. But it's ridiculously bad, it's worse than useless even…

This goes against my daily fsd usage and my friends fsd usage. We all use fsd daily, zero issues, through hard city and highway environments. It’s near perfect outside of the occasional weird routing issues (but that’s not a safety issue). We all have the latest fsd on hw4. No other consumer car on the market in the US can do this (go from point a to b with zero interventions through city and highway). If there was s…

Sigh. FSD is OK on freeways, but it constantly changes lanes for no discernible reasons. Sometimes unsafely or unnaturally, forcing me to take over. The previous stack had a setting to disable that, but not the new end-to-end NN-based system.

In cities, it's just shit. If you're using it without paying attention, your driving license has to be revoked and you should never be allowed to drive.

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

#52

Post by AnotherGoodName »

aetherspawn wrote: post #32
cyberax wrote: post #16

Keep in mind, that $25k AUD is just $16600. And for that price, you're getting a real car with driver-assist features and a reasonable crash safety rating. The US car manufacturers are cooked.

I heard from a friend he paid around $12k AUD for the cheapest new ICE car, Holden brand, which I guess proves the west can compete if they try? Edit: Holden Spark.

Well the best comparison are the Teslas which are made in China (all Teslas sold in Australia today) vs Teslas made in the USA.

For the model 3 it’s USD$8000 cheaper like for like.

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

#53

Post by mrtksn »

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 flood light. Its also how our civilization is designed to function in first place.

Anyway, the whole self driving obsession is ridiculous because being driven around in a bad traffic isn’t that much better than driving in bad traffic. It’s cool but can’t beat a the public infrastructure since you can’t make the car dissipated when not in use.

IMHO, connectivity to simulate public transport can be the real sweet spot, regardless of sensor types. Coordinated cars can solve traffic and pretend to be trains.

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

#54

Post by consumer451 »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #44
senti_sentient wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone said that LiDAR is too expensive, camera is better :)

The long-term view of LIDAR was not so much that it was expensive, though it was at the time. The issue is that it is susceptible to interference if everyone is using LIDAR for everything all the time and it is vulnerable to spoofing/jamming by bad actors. For better or worse, passive optical is much more robust against these types of risks. This doesn't matter much when LIDAR is relatively rare but that can't be ass…

I am just some schmoe, but optics alone can be easily spoofed as any fan of the Wile E. Coyote has known for decades. [0]

What's crazy to me is that anyone would think that anything short of ASI could take image based world understanding to true FSD. Tesla tried to replicate human response, ~"because humans only have eyes" but largely without even stereoscopic vision, ffs.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQJL3htsDyQ

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

#55

Post by jeltz »

DustinBrett wrote: post #13
cr125rider wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not true at all. Tesla taxis aren’t even close to Waymo’s capabilities.

Where is the proof/evidence for this statement?

Curious how you only ask this to people who claim Teslas are bad and not to people who claim Teslas are good.

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

#56

Post by kcb »

iknowstuff wrote: post #4
senti_sentient wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone said that LiDAR is too expensive, camera is better :)

And then made the best adas on the market using cameras

I was just thinking about this on my 60 mile FSD driver I just finished. Basically inevitable that I would shortly go HN or reddit and read how FSD doesn't work.

FSD is here, it wasn't 3 or 4 years ago when I first bought a Tesla, but today it's incredible.

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

#57

Post by AnotherGoodName »

senti_sentient wrote: post #46
g947o wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US manufacturers are going to be ok as long as there are policies banning foreign cars and there are tariffs, which is going to be true for a long time. And somehow US consumers feel comfortable paying more for worse cars.

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.

Those Teslas in Australia are Chinese made too of course as are the majority of Teslas globally. USA made really doesn’t exist at all in Australia. It’s merely USA branded. Even the Ford Ranger that’s sold in Australia is made in Thailand.

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

#58

Post by barbazoo »

protastus wrote: post #50
Tempest1981 wrote: post #24

The roof mount seems very practical, but it's a look that may turn off some buyers... buyers who care about looks. For SUVs, maybe it could be blended in with a roof air scoop, like on some off-road trucks. Or a light bar. Where is the LiDAR on the Atto 1? In the grille? How much worse is the field of view?

My impression is that Chinese consumer products haven't been hijacked by the "design above everything else" mindset. The priority is to make things work at scale. American product design is obsessed with appearance and finish. Products end up costing 3 times more and functionality is degraded.

Also car as a status symbol. If you look at it more utilitarian it’s not that bad as long it’s somehow compatible with a roof rack or box.

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

#59

Post by solumunus »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #44
senti_sentient wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone said that LiDAR is too expensive, camera is better :)

The long-term view of LIDAR was not so much that it was expensive, though it was at the time. The issue is that it is susceptible to interference if everyone is using LIDAR for everything all the time and it is vulnerable to spoofing/jamming by bad actors. For better or worse, passive optical is much more robust against these types of risks. This doesn't matter much when LIDAR is relatively rare but that can't be ass…

Why isn’t the solution a combination of both?

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

#60

Post by cyberax »

g947o wrote: post #36
cyberax wrote: post #16

Keep in mind, that $25k AUD is just $16600. And for that price, you're getting a real car with driver-assist features and a reasonable crash safety rating. The US car manufacturers are cooked.

US manufacturers are going to be ok as long as there are policies banning foreign cars and there are tariffs, which is going to be true for a long time. And somehow US consumers feel comfortable paying more for worse cars.

This can't last indefinitely. At some point, the contrast between the US-made and Chinese-made cars will become too great to ignore.

We saw that during the 80-s, with the Japanese cars.

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