> This is especially true in heavy rains, snow and any driving condition that doesn't follow the nicest of layouts like the Bay Area. CommaAI also believes lid

> This is especially true in heavy rains, snow and any driving condition that doesn't follow the nicest of layouts like the Bay Area. CommaAI also believes lidar are a bad idea. Tesla has cars using their technology everyday all over the world and thus have 10000x more insight into how conditions effects their hardware/software. While Waymo has spend 10 years testing in Arizona and basically never once had to contend with these problems. And lidar does have its issues in certain conditions as well, its not some magic technology. > They seem to be going to Waymo, Uber, Apple and Nvidia instead. Very hard to judge that. I would like to see the numbers on that. The main evidence to me is that SpaceX/Tesla always rank highest on 'Where you want to work' for engineering students. Also, it seems to me that Tesla is focusing very having a basic framework that non-super AI experts can improve the system. That is the only way you can even begin to manage the complexity of the global road network something people like Waymo has defiantly not yet even begin to solve. > 3D self-driving labs are all building on each other's work, as the cost of GPUs and LIDAR sensors has dropped by orders of magnitude over the last decade. And Tesla makes its own hardware that dropped even more compared to what everybody else uses. > Cameras and sensors on the other hand remain more or less where they were 10 years ago, and Tesla is left alone to compete with everyone else. Lidar by itself does nothing, you still need cameras and sensors as well, so it is purely added cost. There is simply no denying that high quality cheap lidar that can be deployed on millions of cars doesn't exist yet. I would not be against Tesla using lidar. My more important point is that I think HD mapping is a horrible idea, lidar or not. And as long as that is the way you approach the problem you will never have a general self driving solution.