Is this Human safe at these volumes? There was a time you could get your feet sized by putting them into an X-ray box at the shoe store. Removed from stores once the harm was known.
Sub-$200 Lidar could reshuffle auto sensor economics
61–70 of 582 posts
Re: Sub-$200 Lidar could reshuffle auto sensor economics
#62What is this author even doing with these numbers?
Re: Sub-$200 Lidar could reshuffle auto sensor economics
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
Anytime a Tesla or Elon related article is posted it gets a barrage of negative comments usually FUD like. Any neutral or positive comment gets downvoted heavily. Bit suspicious to say the least, very clear pattern, they are not doing it very well should be a bit more nuanced.
There is no evidence of any such organised campaign. The critical comments we see against that company and person are generally from known, established HN users, and align with frequently-expressed sentiments among the general public. And the complaint is just as often made that "anything remotely critical" about that company and person is flagged. If posts about the topic are being downvoted and flagged, it's mostly…
What a great website. Thanks for the data! And good work
Re: Sub-$200 Lidar could reshuffle auto sensor economics
#64Oh hell yeah, we can finally stop the braindead attempts to make a safe self-driving car with just cameras.
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…
Humans cannot drive safely. Human drivers kill someone every 26 seconds. Waymos have never killed a person.
Part of that is that humans are distractible, and their performance can be degraded in many ways, and that silicon thinks faster than meat.
But part of it is the sensor suite. Look at Waymo vs Tesla robotaxi accident rates.
Re: Sub-$200 Lidar could reshuffle auto sensor economics
#65Interestingly, there have been people in the LIDAR industry predicting costs like this for many years. I heard numbers like $250 per vehicle back in 2012 [1] Of course, ambitious pricing like this is all about economies of scale - sensors that are used in production vehicles are ordered by the million, and that lowers the costs massively. When the huge orders didn't materialise, the economies of scale and low prices…
Also 'Luminar Technologies, a prominent U.S. lidar manufacturer, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in December 2025' LIDAR is useful in a small set of scenarios (calibration and validation) but do not bet the farm on it or make it the centre piece of your sensor suite.
The same Luminar from the Mark Rober video?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2025/03/17/youtub...
Re: Sub-$200 Lidar could reshuffle auto sensor economics
#66[dead]
Re: Sub-$200 Lidar could reshuffle auto sensor economics
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
And barely gets enforced
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GDPR_fines_and_notices Top 5 fines: 1 - Meta - Ireland - €1.2 billion 2 - Amazon Europe - Luxembourg - €746 millions 3 - WhatsApp - Ireland - €225 millions 4 - British Airway - UK - £183 millions 5 - Google - France - €60 millions I wish every law barely got enforced this way.
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Re: Sub-$200 Lidar could reshuffle auto sensor economics
#68Interesting to see the cost curve drop ... this always changes the market. I have been watching the sensor space for a while. Cheap LIDAR units could open up weird DIY uses and not just cars. ALSO regulatory and mapping integration will matter. I tried to work with public datasets and it's messy. The hardware is only one part! BUT it's exciting to see multiple vendors in the space. Competition might push vendors to r…
> Cheap LIDAR units could open up weird DIY uses and not just cars. Interestingly, there are already some comparatively cheap LIDAR units on the market. In the automotive market, ideally you need a 200m+ range (or whatever the stopping distance of your vehicle is) and you need to operate in bright direct sunlight (good luck making an eye-safe laser that doesn't get washed out by the sun) and you need more than one sc…
Sounds like the quality isn't all that great but LD06 sensors look like they're about $20 and someone who works on libraries about this suggested the STL27L which seems to be about $160 and here's an outdoor scan from it: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/pidar-scan-240901-0647-7997b...
Not sure if the ld06 is a scanner like this or if it's just a line (like you'd use for a cheaper robot vac).
Re: Sub-$200 Lidar could reshuffle auto sensor economics
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also 'Luminar Technologies, a prominent U.S. lidar manufacturer, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in December 2025' LIDAR is useful in a small set of scenarios (calibration and validation) but do not bet the farm on it or make it the centre piece of your sensor suite.
Lidar is critical for any autonomous vehicle. It turns out a very accurate 3D point cloud of the environment is very useful for self driving. Crazy, I know.
Useful but not at all required.
Camera + radar is sufficient for driving, and camera+ USS is fine for parking.
Radar is just cheaper than the number of cameras and compute, it's also not really a strict requirement.
Look at how the current cars fuck up, it's mostly navigation, context understanding, and tight manoeuvres. Lidar gives you very little in these areas
Re: Sub-$200 Lidar could reshuffle auto sensor economics
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
And barely gets enforced
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GDPR_fines_and_notices Top 5 fines: 1 - Meta - Ireland - €1.2 billion 2 - Amazon Europe - Luxembourg - €746 millions 3 - WhatsApp - Ireland - €225 millions 4 - British Airway - UK - £183 millions 5 - Google - France - €60 millions I wish every law barely got enforced this way.
pretty pathetic, but people keep insisting you can regulate capital