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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

#61

Post by ycui1986 »

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…

everyone uses cellphone that transmit on the same frequency. they don't seem to cause interference. once enough lidar enters real word use. there will be regulation to make them work with each other.

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

#62

Post by Philip-J-Fry »

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…

I'd assume not since Waymo uses lidar and has entire depots of them driving around in close proximity when not in use.

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

#64

Post by DustinEchoes »

senti_sentient wrote: post #39
DustinEchoes wrote: post #22

Still not convinced of the safety of lidar. I guess all these cars with cheap lidar sensors on board will generate real world safety data over the next few years.

Why not? And cheap is a relative term, from American point of view these sensors may be expensive because they have to buy it from suppliers, from BYD’s perspective it could be home grown given they are by far the most vertically integrated vehicle manufacturer.

See here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46110395

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

#65

Post by jayd16 »

knallfrosch wrote: post #31
Tycho wrote: post #25

How do you train a model to drive with LiDAR when the human drivers who generate the training data don’t use LiDAR?

Scan with LiDAR while manually driving.

Hell, you could even use slower offline 3d reconstruction of vision data for training, and still ultimately rely on runtime LiDAR.

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

#67

Post by JumpCrisscross »

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…

Between anti-Musk sentiment, competition in self driving and the proven track record of Lidar, I think we’ll start seeing jurisdictions from Europe to New York and California banning camera-only self-driving beyond Level 3.

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

#68

Post by JumpCrisscross »

durandal1 wrote: post #30
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…

For anyone who has or has experienced the latest gen FSD from Tesla this comes across as a complete lie. Why would you spend energy lying on HN of all places?

> anyone who has or has experienced the latest gen FSD from Tesla this comes across as a complete lie

I used the latest FSD and Waymo in December. FSD still needs to be supervised. It’s impressive and better than what my Subaru’s lane-keeping software can do. But I can confidently nap in a Waymo. These are totally different products and technology stacks.

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

#69

Post by senti_sentient »

AnotherGoodName wrote: post #57
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.

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.

True true… isn’t the LFP battery pack in model 3 and and Y supplied by BYD as well?

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

#70

Post by jandrewrogers »

ycui1986 wrote: post #61
jandrewrogers wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

everyone uses cellphone that transmit on the same frequency. they don't seem to cause interference. once enough lidar enters real word use. there will be regulation to make them work with each other.

Completely different problem domains. A mobile phone is interacting with a fixed point (i.e. cell tower) that coordinates and manages traffic across cell phones to minimize interference. LIDAR is like wifi, a commons that can be polluted at will by arbitrary actors.

LIDAR has much more in common with ordinary radar (it is in the name, after all) and is similarly susceptible to interference.

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