4 ms·

As long as Musk continues to insist that Tesla doesn't need Lidar, their self-driving technology will always be a level lower than Waymo/Cruise/etc

fastball 6y ago
Humans don't need LIDAR.
- sschueller 6y ago
  Humans make mistakes. FSD has to be better than humans.
  - fastball 6y ago
    Tesla has more than just two cameras in their FSD package.
    - tylerhou 6y ago
      It seems like Musk has decided that if humans can drive visually, then cars can. Why did he choose this line? That is, if humans only need two eyes to drive, then why not just only use two cameras? Isn't using more than two cameras (and radar) admitting that cars need more "help" than humans? If using more than two cameras is okay, why not go further and use LIDAR or HD-mappings? I believe that Musk chose this line because he knows that LIDAR (in its current state) is too expensive to sell to consumers. Same with HD-mapping. We know that LIDAR based systems have achieved "better" self-driving than camera based systems. It's still possible that Musk is correct. But at present, it seems to me that Musk's position therefore seems like a mostly ideological stance, and not based on any real data. That's why people doubt Tesla's ability to execute on Level 4/5 self driving. The market will punish ideological purists when they are wrong.
      - fastball 6y ago
        Nobody has demonstrated L 4/5, so all positions are ideological ones. You could also argue that because LIDAR is expensive, it's hard to get billions of miles of training from LIDAR-equipped vehicles. This is not the case with Tesla's sensing package, which is racking up the miles as we speak. So sure, expense makes it less appealing from a consumer perspective, but its also possible that the difficulty of deploying LIDAR fleets makes it less likely to achieve FSD in the short term due to less capacity to generate training data. Long-term we'll probably want all our vehicles to have as many sensors as is feasible. But nobody trying to get to FSD today is worried about what it will look like in 100 years – they're all trying to get their first.
        ra7 6y ago
        > Nobody has demonstrated L 4/5, so all positions are ideological ones. Er, Waymo is doing a commercial L4 service. Cruise is doing pretty good. So no, they are not all "ideological positions". Also, no one except Tesla is targeting L5 which should tell you what the realistic goal is. > You could also argue that because LIDAR is expensive, it's hard to get billions of miles of training from LIDAR-equipped vehicles. LIDAR is expensive was a good argument in 2015. The prices are plummeting. Waymo reduced their top of line LIDAR cost from $75,000 to under $7500 and this was in 2017. They sell their short range LIDAR (Honeycomb) for under $1000. And their 5th gen hardware costs even less now (my guess is under $5000). Which way do you think the price will go as a number of companies mass produce it? The fact is Elon made a bad bet a few years ago and didn't anticipate how much the cost would drop. Now Tesla is stuck with his ideological stance trying make a pipe dream work.
        fastball 6y ago
        From what I've seen of Tesla's FSD beta, it could very probably be T4 if Tesla geofenced certain areas and worked out any particular kinks manually. T4 with geofencing is a far cry from T4 on any road anywhere. That last sentence seems like a strange one. "Stuck" would be if you massively invested in LIDAR and it didn't help. If no-LIDAR FSD is not as feasible as Tesla hopes, they can just... use LIDAR. And they'll arguably be in a better position tahn early adopters because they weren't investing when the hardware was expensive.
- qeternity 6y ago
  The whole point of autonomous driving is to surpass human levels of ability. Computers don't (yet) have the hardware nor software of a human brain. So they better come with extra tricks, like lidar.
- emkoemko 6y ago
  why would we want cars that drive like humans? i want a car the drives better then humans.
  - fastball 6y ago
    Yes, hence the sensing package that has more than two cameras. LIDAR is not mandatory for better driving than humans.
    - mike_d 6y ago
      The burden of proof for that statement is on Tesla, and thus far they have failed to deliver. 100% of vendors above 10k miles driven between disengagements have included LIDAR in their systems. The fact is Tesla is not submitting test data to the California DMV, which means they are either not developing a self driving system and have no right to speak to what technology is or isn't mandatory - or they are doing illegal testing, which speaks volumes about the trust you should put in their opinion.
      - fastball 6y ago
        The burden of proof is on all self-driving companies. Nobody has proven "better than human" capabilities, LIDAR or no.
        sprafa 6y ago
        Waymo does have better than human capabilities.
        mike_d 6y ago
        "You don't need LIDAR" is an extraordinary claim and counter to accepted best practice in the industry. The burden of proof is not on the rest of the world to disprove Tesla, but on Tesla to provide evidence that supports it. That is how science works.
  - mewpmewp2 6y ago
    Cars that drive like humans would already be good to save man hours spent on driving.
- rainyMammoth 6y ago
  I cannot believe that smart people still repeat that argument. Until you have something like the human brain powering the car you cannot just use "two eyes"
  - fastball 6y ago
    Cannot believe you think Teslas only have two eyes.
    - babelfish 6y ago
      But you said we don't need Lidar because humans don't. Why would Tesla need more than 2 eyes if humans only have 2 eyes?
      - fastball 6y ago
        Because at this moment, the only thing we know can be as good as a human is a human. That means the only thing we know can work is eyes + brain. The answer to your question is: we don't know what's needed, so people saying "sorry you need LIDAR for FSD" is much more "drank the coolaid" than my stance of "we don't know, maybe no LIDAR + lots of training data can work just fine". Or, turn the question on its head – how much better at driving do you think humans would be if we had LIDAR on top of our heads? My guess is... not very. Hence my belief that the Tesla approach (less SOTA sensing, more training data) is a reasonable one.
        babelfish 6y ago
        Your stance of "we don't know, maybe no LIDAR + lots of training data can work just fine" implies that a computer functions as well as a human brain, which as several other commenters have pointed out, is simply not true. I don't have a comment for you about LiDAR on top of humans heads, but I would bet that humans with one eye (and hence no depth perception) are worse at driving than humans with two eyes. There are also countless other sensors in your body that determine depth perception besides just your eyes - your entire nervous system is at play.
- fundatus 6y ago
  humans also have brains with an amount of computing power thats far greater than whats currently available, let alone in a tesla car.
  - alacombe 6y ago
    Not to mention that disregarding driving rules to get out of exceptional situation is acceptable to a human.
llsf 6y ago
What about sound ? I drive with my eyes, but also with my ears. Do we know if any of those systems (Tesla, Waymo, Cruise, etc.) also use the sound for driving ? While it is not sufficient on its own, it would yet another (small) piece of the puzzle.
- ra7 6y ago
  Waymo uses sound to detect emergency vehicles: https://medium.com/waymo/recognizing-the-sights-and-sounds-of-emergency-vehicles-8161e90d137e https://medium.com/waymo/recognizing-the-sights-and-sounds-o...

fastball 6y ago

Humans don't need LIDAR.

sschueller 6y ago
Humans make mistakes. FSD has to be better than humans.
- fastball 6y ago
  Tesla has more than just two cameras in their FSD package.
  - tylerhou 6y ago
    It seems like Musk has decided that if humans can drive visually, then cars can. Why did he choose this line? That is, if humans only need two eyes to drive, then why not just only use two cameras? Isn't using more than two cameras (and radar) admitting that cars need more "help" than humans? If using more than two cameras is okay, why not go further and use LIDAR or HD-mappings? I believe that Musk chose this line because he knows that LIDAR (in its current state) is too expensive to sell to consumers. Same with HD-mapping. We know that LIDAR based systems have achieved "better" self-driving than camera based systems. It's still possible that Musk is correct. But at present, it seems to me that Musk's position therefore seems like a mostly ideological stance, and not based on any real data. That's why people doubt Tesla's ability to execute on Level 4/5 self driving. The market will punish ideological purists when they are wrong.
    - fastball 6y ago
      Nobody has demonstrated L 4/5, so all positions are ideological ones. You could also argue that because LIDAR is expensive, it's hard to get billions of miles of training from LIDAR-equipped vehicles. This is not the case with Tesla's sensing package, which is racking up the miles as we speak. So sure, expense makes it less appealing from a consumer perspective, but its also possible that the difficulty of deploying LIDAR fleets makes it less likely to achieve FSD in the short term due to less capacity to generate training data. Long-term we'll probably want all our vehicles to have as many sensors as is feasible. But nobody trying to get to FSD today is worried about what it will look like in 100 years – they're all trying to get their first.
      - ra7 6y ago
        > Nobody has demonstrated L 4/5, so all positions are ideological ones. Er, Waymo is doing a commercial L4 service. Cruise is doing pretty good. So no, they are not all "ideological positions". Also, no one except Tesla is targeting L5 which should tell you what the realistic goal is. > You could also argue that because LIDAR is expensive, it's hard to get billions of miles of training from LIDAR-equipped vehicles. LIDAR is expensive was a good argument in 2015. The prices are plummeting. Waymo reduced their top of line LIDAR cost from $75,000 to under $7500 and this was in 2017. They sell their short range LIDAR (Honeycomb) for under $1000. And their 5th gen hardware costs even less now (my guess is under $5000). Which way do you think the price will go as a number of companies mass produce it? The fact is Elon made a bad bet a few years ago and didn't anticipate how much the cost would drop. Now Tesla is stuck with his ideological stance trying make a pipe dream work.
        fastball 6y ago
        From what I've seen of Tesla's FSD beta, it could very probably be T4 if Tesla geofenced certain areas and worked out any particular kinks manually. T4 with geofencing is a far cry from T4 on any road anywhere. That last sentence seems like a strange one. "Stuck" would be if you massively invested in LIDAR and it didn't help. If no-LIDAR FSD is not as feasible as Tesla hopes, they can just... use LIDAR. And they'll arguably be in a better position tahn early adopters because they weren't investing when the hardware was expensive.
qeternity 6y ago
The whole point of autonomous driving is to surpass human levels of ability. Computers don't (yet) have the hardware nor software of a human brain. So they better come with extra tricks, like lidar.
emkoemko 6y ago
why would we want cars that drive like humans? i want a car the drives better then humans.
- fastball 6y ago
  Yes, hence the sensing package that has more than two cameras. LIDAR is not mandatory for better driving than humans.
  - mike_d 6y ago
    The burden of proof for that statement is on Tesla, and thus far they have failed to deliver. 100% of vendors above 10k miles driven between disengagements have included LIDAR in their systems. The fact is Tesla is not submitting test data to the California DMV, which means they are either not developing a self driving system and have no right to speak to what technology is or isn't mandatory - or they are doing illegal testing, which speaks volumes about the trust you should put in their opinion.
    - fastball 6y ago
      The burden of proof is on all self-driving companies. Nobody has proven "better than human" capabilities, LIDAR or no.
      - sprafa 6y ago
        Waymo does have better than human capabilities.
      - mike_d 6y ago
        "You don't need LIDAR" is an extraordinary claim and counter to accepted best practice in the industry. The burden of proof is not on the rest of the world to disprove Tesla, but on Tesla to provide evidence that supports it. That is how science works.
- mewpmewp2 6y ago
  Cars that drive like humans would already be good to save man hours spent on driving.
rainyMammoth 6y ago
I cannot believe that smart people still repeat that argument. Until you have something like the human brain powering the car you cannot just use "two eyes"
- fastball 6y ago
  Cannot believe you think Teslas only have two eyes.
  - babelfish 6y ago
    But you said we don't need Lidar because humans don't. Why would Tesla need more than 2 eyes if humans only have 2 eyes?
    - fastball 6y ago
      Because at this moment, the only thing we know can be as good as a human is a human. That means the only thing we know can work is eyes + brain. The answer to your question is: we don't know what's needed, so people saying "sorry you need LIDAR for FSD" is much more "drank the coolaid" than my stance of "we don't know, maybe no LIDAR + lots of training data can work just fine". Or, turn the question on its head – how much better at driving do you think humans would be if we had LIDAR on top of our heads? My guess is... not very. Hence my belief that the Tesla approach (less SOTA sensing, more training data) is a reasonable one.
      - babelfish 6y ago
        Your stance of "we don't know, maybe no LIDAR + lots of training data can work just fine" implies that a computer functions as well as a human brain, which as several other commenters have pointed out, is simply not true. I don't have a comment for you about LiDAR on top of humans heads, but I would bet that humans with one eye (and hence no depth perception) are worse at driving than humans with two eyes. There are also countless other sensors in your body that determine depth perception besides just your eyes - your entire nervous system is at play.
fundatus 6y ago
humans also have brains with an amount of computing power thats far greater than whats currently available, let alone in a tesla car.
- alacombe 6y ago
  Not to mention that disregarding driving rules to get out of exceptional situation is acceptable to a human.

llsf 6y ago

What about sound ? I drive with my eyes, but also with my ears. Do we know if any of those systems (Tesla, Waymo, Cruise, etc.) also use the sound for driving ? While it is not sufficient on its own, it would yet another (small) piece of the puzzle.

ra7 6y ago
Waymo uses sound to detect emergency vehicles: https://medium.com/waymo/recognizing-the-sights-and-sounds-of-emergency-vehicles-8161e90d137e https://medium.com/waymo/recognizing-the-sights-and-sounds-o...