> When radar and vision disagree, which one do you believe? Vision has much more precision, so better to double down on vision than do sensor fusion.

[1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1380796939151704071

As I’ve commented above, “conflicting sensors” doesn’t make much sense as an argument. If sensors A and B conflicted, you could just ignore sensor B and get performance at least as good as just having sensor A.

Does sensor B have enough other benefits to outweigh the costs of adding it? I don’t know, but that’s the actual crux of this problem.

Sensor B “enhancing” sensor A is the exact same situation as a sensor conflict. How do you tell them apart? You’re oversimplifying the issue as if it was a matter of simple addition.

It's a shame people at Boeing seem to have the same outlook on this question. Cost a few hundred people their lives recently. When two sensors disagree, you don't know which one is right, but you know there's something wrong. You're going to fail, but at least you can fail safe. With only one sensor, you don't have that option.

Hence my question, "How much precision do you need to keep from running into a parked truck?"

I don’t see how “enhancing” and “conflict” are the same. As gkop pointed out, the two sensor types may have different ranges of view, or may agree about situations where just sensor A may be uncertain.

How much precision do you need to keep from running into a truck?

Since Lidar doesn't use moving parts I imagine it should be easy to make it last longer than the life of the vehicle.

You are confusing radar and lidar I think. True solid state automotive lidar is largely still in a research state. Most 'solid state' lidar sensors actually have very tiny moving parts in the form of MEMS assemblies. Even more delicate than a macro mechanical assembly.

But for radar, correct, those modules are available as a commodity for automotive lifescales.

The general problem is that simple, cost effective radar is low precision while expensive, complex lidar is high precision.

Looks like the 2022 Wey SUV from Great Wall Motors will have a true solid state lidar from Ibeo / ZF.