I think LIDAR was and maybe still is way more expensive. Initially running 75k. Now they're more around 10k which is better.

This is off by orders of magnitude. BYD is buying LIDAR units for their cars for $140.

That's likely closer to reality now, but that's not counting the cost for R&D to add it to the car, any additional costs that come with it besides the LIDAR hardware, plus the added cost to install it.

All of that combined is probably closer to $1k than to $140.

And, again, that's - what - 10 years after Tesla originally made the decision to go vision only.

It wasn't a terrible idea at the time, but they should've pivoted at some point.

They could've had a massive lead in data if they pivoted as late as 3 years ago, when the total cost would probably be under $2.5k, and that could've led to a positive feedback loop, cause they'd probably have a system better than Waymo by now.

Instead, they've got a pile of garbage, and no path to improve it substantially.

I can't be sure, but I doubt Tesla is spending less than $140 on their cameras. High fidelity, high frame rate color cameras aren't actually cheap...

Not all LIDARs are equal. Just because BYD is spending $140 on a LIDAR system does not mean it's the same quality as the Waymo system reported to cost $75k almost a decade ago, or, especially, the same quality as the ones in use today.

They might be!

But I doubt it.

I don't know enough about Tesla's cameras, but it's not implausible to think there are LIDARs of low enough quality that you'd be better off with a good quality camera for your sensor.

Again, I doubt this is the case with BYDs cameras.

But it's still worth pointing out, I think.

My point is, BYD's LIDAR system costing $x is only one small part of the conversation.

I would say a $140 LIDAR system that’s currently being used in production cars [somewhere] is better than a $0 non-existent LIDAR system. Pair a cheap LIDAR system with some nice cameras and perhaps you can make up much of the difference in software.

Well maybe Tesla should adopt it then.

The new electric Volvos have LIDAR, proving that the technology has (at least now) approached mass-market feasibility.

Ummm, it is actually active with ADAS anywhere? Certainly not in the US.

>The EX90's LiDAR enhances ADAS features like collision mitigation and lane-keeping, which are active and assisting drivers. However, full autonomy (Level 3) is not yet available, as the Ride Pilot feature is still under development and not activated.

A single car in US whose lidar is not operational yet and burns thru cameras? Wouldn’t call it success just yet.

My floor-cleaning robot has a lidar and i am pretty certain that part did not cost 10k$.

It goes very slow and it doesn't need to work with high resolution or long distances. It has plenty of time to average out noise.

Solid-state LIDAR is still a fairly new thing. LIDAR sensors were big, clunky, and expensive back when Tesla started their Autopilot/FSD program.

I googled a bit and found a DFR1030 solid-state LIDAR unit for 267 DKK (for one). It has a field of view of 108 degrees and an angular resolution of 0.6 degrees. It has an angle error of 3 degrees and a max distance of 300mm. It can run at 7.5-28 Hz.

Clearly fine for a floor-cleaning robot or a toy. Clearly not good enough for a car (which would need several of them).

well, probably different grades of lidar for different use cases.

This. It's also the reason Waymo is ahead, they have tons of high quality training data being constantly fed into their pipeline.

Even if Tesla wasn't using LIDAR, I think they did still use radar and ultrasonic detection for a while, which I'm sure contributed to their models some.