The LiDAR you have on your vacuum isn't going to cut it as a safety relevant component onboard your car. Automotive-grade LiDAR are on another price range. Development for such sensors is quoted separately from the part price, and it costs millions of $.
The LiDAR you have on your vacuum isn't going to cut it as a safety relevant component onboard your car. Automotive-grade LiDAR are on another price range. Development for such sensors is quoted separately from the part price, and it costs millions of $.
Obviously, but my Ford Escape PHEV also has LiDAR and, despite being the highest trim level, cost FAR less than a Tesla. It doesn’t do FSD, obviously, but it still has LiDAR. And radar. And will do level 2 self driving enough that if I’m driving in traffic I’m more managing the car than driving it.
There is zero good excuse for not including LiDAR in Teslas.
There is a reason. It's just not a good one. It's profit.
I don't believe Tesla ever intended on having full self driving. That's just an idea Musk sold people to boost confidence in the company. The promise sold vehicles and boosted stock value, making Musk a shit load of money.
What difference would it make if they were fully devoted to FSD with the best technology they could get? It still wouldn't work perfectly and wouldn't be allowed alone everywhere probably, and they would have made less profit during that period. In what time frame would it actually pay back?
I can't seem to find information about the Ford Escape having a LiDAR, it's not on the spec. Sheet on Ford's website and in the news it's only about prototypes.
I am not saying Teslas should or shouldn't have LiDARs. I am just curious. I only know about Audi, Mercedes, Honda and Hyundai currently selling cars with LiDAR used for ADAS. They might be more Chinese OEMs selling cars with LiDARs, buy Ford, it surprises me.
Yes they sure did. I don't believe any Tesla ever shipped with Lidar, maybe some did. The big thing that they removed/disabled was the radar. They did this because the radar and visual cameras would disagree about where things were. So instead of spending more R&D time to get it right. They just removed the radar and called it solved.
They both suck and Waymo's has a whole ass sensor thingie on the roof. So it's insane that Tesla's is even legal given that they rely entirely on cameras and fate.
Waymo is literally being investigated for self-driving incidents lol... They've also only been able to operate in a small area. I wouldn't really call that chess.
I used to be so excited for self driving cars, but my naive younger self assumed they'd actually make sure they're safe before putting them on public roads.
Comparing Tesla with Waymo is stupid. They are doing fundamentally different things, and people like this author don't realize that.
Waymo's technology, like a few self-driving products from Ford or GM, rely on having a centimeter level 3D scan of the road ahead of time. This allows a crap ton of pre-processing so fewer decisions need to be made in the car. It's a developmental shortcut, but it also means their cars will only work on roads that have been scanned and processed and approved ahead of time.
Tesla's system doesn't pre scan roads. It makes all the decisions on the fly based solely on what the car is seeing as it drives. That means that it can theoretically work on any road, in any situation, without advance preparation.
Tesla's approach tackles a MUCH harder problem. And that must be considered when comparing the two technologies.
Otherwise it's like looking at two people at the gym, William lifts 25lb weights and can now lift them 10 times, Tom lifts 250 lb weights and can now lift them 9 times, and saying that William is in better shape than Tom because he can do more reps. No, Tom is in better shape because he is lifting a lot more weight. Even though he can't lift it as many times, he's doing a lot more work in his workout.
I wonder if they’ve thought about having an extra long car, like I’m talking fits nearly 100 people. That way instead of having 25 cars self driving, you could have 1 driver.
You could even put it on tracks so you don’t need to worry about steering. Just go /stop.
