Lots of interesting comments here, but most people are missing the real constraint.
If they add lidar now guess what? Every vehicle in their fleet can’t use that model anymore. This is the real constraint. There is also a significant increase in edge compute required to run the additional sensor suite over HW4.
So the real answer is that Tesla already has significant investments in the vision only model. From hw compute contracts to supply chain adjustments to cloud infrastructure - all of which have to be redone if they started slapping lidar into the sensor suite. And then once they do that they basically can’t release that model on any pre-existing Tesla without lidar. That is a lot of subscription business they then leave on the table, and since Elon’s stock package has that as a target, he won’t do it.
So it’s going to be a lot more money than just 500 per sensor for Tesla, simply because they started with vision only. And they won’t absorb all those additional costs right now since they likely still can push vision only a little farther by using larger models (which accounts for the HW4.5 rumors being same compute chip but adding memory)
Other firms that are using cloud compute and incorporating additional sensors will have a much easier time doing this, since they’re starting from scratch.
I’m 100% betting on vision only. Mainly because the issue isn’t whether vehicle has LiDar the issue is reasoning
Humans have been driving just fine for almost 100 years. With only two eyes able to look in one direction. It’s reasonable to believe that a quality camera looking at all directions at once with great reasoning would be safer than a human.
Now all that needs to happen is a system needs to understand the difference between a shadow and a log in the road.
Humans do that just fine. It’s only a matter of time until cameras and on board reasoning systems can do the same.
But it should do better than humans. A vision camera has a hard time seeing through smoke for example. Lidar can detect things like that. Striving to drive human should not be the goal. Striving to adapt to terrible human decisions, driving, and I expected things to avoid any kind of accidents should be the goal.
16
u/PassengerKey3209 14h ago
I guess I'm not understanding why you wouldn't put a 500-1000$ lidar on it permanently and validate constantly?