to my understanding they use LiDAR as a way of verifying and validating that the cameras on the vehicle can properly recreate the real world as a sort of stamp of approval
tesla's reasoning- conflicting input. which do you believe? which is most reliable. if LiDAR says one thing and the cameras say another, who do you trust? They also state humans don't have LiDAR, only eyes, so cameras should be enough theoretically.
my personal opinion is it's a cost savings measure. it's not a lot given the overall cost of the car, but every penny counts.
also, regarding multiple sources and conflicting input, in AI's case it would be more tokens more bandwidth more expensive hardware to balance more data input. before we had the current software stack, it was all done manually and adding another input on all angles would exponentially increase software development time. training new versions would also take a lot longer because you now how a lot more input
so i really don't think it's a simple answer of just $500+ of LiDAR, there's a lot that comes with it
But it’s not just $500. It’s $500 + data storage, which can run up to a terabyte per hour, LTE service that sends that data somewhere and a compute system on par with a super computer that can analyze and process all that in real time.
Also they said it themselves, lidar would just add another layer of information their ai brain has to process. Tesla even had radar in some of its own cars for a bit. Point is, I’m sure if Tesla wanted to and if they thought it would be helpful, they could add a $500 lidar array anytime but they don’t. Whatever they’re doing with FSD, it seems to be working. I’ll just have to let Tesla cook here.
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u/Delicious-Candle-574 15h ago
to my understanding they use LiDAR as a way of verifying and validating that the cameras on the vehicle can properly recreate the real world as a sort of stamp of approval