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Given a good proportion of his success has rested on somehow simplifying or commodifying existing expensive technology (e.g. rockets, and lots of the technology

by mft_ 9mo ago

Given a good proportion of his success has rested on somehow simplifying or commodifying existing expensive technology (e.g. rockets, and lots of the technology needed to make them; EV batteries) it's surprising that Musk's response to lidar being (at the time) very expensive was to avoid it despite the additional challenges that this brought, rather than attempt to carve a moat by innovating and creating cheaper and better lidar. > So it’s not a surprise to see the low end models with lidar. They could be going for a Tesla-esque approach, in that by equipping every car in the fleet with lidar, they maximise the data captured to help train their models.

spiderfarmer 9mo ago
The ways in which Musk dug himself in when experts predicted this exact scenario confirmed to me he was not as smart as some people think he was. He seemed to have drank his own koolaid back then. And if he still doesn’t realize and admit he is wrong then he is just plain dumb. Pride is standing in the way of first principles.
- d_luaz 9mo ago
  Will there be major difference in ride experience when you take a Waymo vs Robotaxi?
  - tstrimple 9mo ago
    Considering one requires a human babysitter and one doesn’t on top of the accident rates between them it should be an easy yes.
    - d_luaz 9mo ago
      Fair. So in a sense, the lidar vs camera argument ultimately can be publicly assess/proven through human babysitter (regulation permit) and accident rates. or maybe user adoptions.
- TOMDM 9mo ago
  Musk has for a long time now been convinced that all problems in this space are solvable via vision. Same deal with his comments about how all anti-air military capability will be dominated by optical sensors.
- brightball 9mo ago
  I think there’s room for both points of view here. Going all in on visual processing means you can use it anywhere a person can go in any other technology, Optimus robots are just one example. And he’s not wrong that roads and driving laws are all built around human visual processing. The recent example of a power outage in SF where lidar powered Waymo’s all stopped working when the traffic lights were out and Tesla self driving continued operating normally makes a good case for the approach.
  - NewJazz 9mo ago
    Didn't waymo stop operating simply because they aren't as cavalier as Tesla, and they have much more to lose since they are actually self driving instead of just driver assistance? Was the lidar/vision difference actually significant?
    - brightball 9mo ago
      The reports I’ve read said that some continued to attempt to navigate with the street lights out, but that the vehicles all have a remote confirmation where they try to call home to confirm what to do. That ended up self DDoSing Waymo causing vehicles to stop in the middle of the road and at intersections with their hazards on. So to clarify, it wasn’t entirely a lidar problem it was an need to call home to navigate.
  - sroussey 9mo ago
    > roads and driving laws are all built around human visual processing. And people die all the time. > The recent example of a power outage in SF where lidar powered Waymo’s all stopped working when the traffic lights were out and Tesla self driving continued operating normally makes a good case for the approach. Huh? Waymo is responsible for injury, so all their cars called home at the same time DOS themselves rather than kill someone. Tesla makes no responsibility and does nothing. I can’t see the logic the brings vision only as having anything to do lights out. At all.
    - tonyhb 9mo ago
- moogly 9mo ago
  > And if he still doesn’t realize and admit he is wrong then he is just plain dumb. The absolute genius made sure that he can't back out without making it bleedingly obvious that old cars can never be upgraded for a LIDAR-based stack. Right now he's avoiding a company-killing class action suit by stalling, hoping people will get rid of HW3 cars, (and you can add HW4 cars soon too) and pretending that those cars will be updated, but if you also need to have LIDAR sensors, you're massively screwed.
- SequoiaHope 9mo ago
  I wonder how much of their trouble comes from other failures in their plan (avoiding the use of pre-made maps and single city taxi services in favor of a system intended to drive in unseen cities) vs how much comes from vision. There are concerning failure modes from vision alone but it’s not clear that’s actually the reason for the failure. Waymo built an expensive safe system that is a taxi first and can only operate on certain areas, and then they ran reps on those areas for a decade. Tesla specifically decided not to use the taxi-first approach, which does make sense since they want to sell cars. One of the first major failures of their approach was to start selling pre-orders for self driving. If they hadn’t, they would not have needed to promise it would work everywhere, and could have pivoted to single city taxi services like the other companies, or added lidar. But certainly it all came from Musk’s hubris, first to set out to solve the self driving in all conditions using only vision, and then to start selling it before it was done, making it difficult to change paths once so much had been promised.
- lostlogin 9mo ago
  > The ways in which Musk dug himself in when experts predicted This had happened a load of times with him. It seemed to ramp up around paedo sub, and I wonder what went on with him at that time.
  - linohh 9mo ago
    Behaviour that would be consistent with stimulant abuse.
- mft_ 9mo ago
  > The ways in which Musk dug himself in when experts predicted this exact scenario confirmed to me he was not as smart as some people think he was. History is replete with smart people making bad decisions. Someone can be exceptionally smart (in some domains) and have made a bad decision. > He seemed to have drank his own koolaid back then. Indeed; but he was on a run of success, based on repeatedly succeeding deliberately against established expertise, so I imagine that Koolaid was pretty compelling.
- Yizahi 9mo ago
  To be frank, no one had a crystal ball back then, and stuff could go either way with uncertainty in both hardware and software capabilities. Sure Lidars were better even back then, but the bet was on catching up on them. I hate Elon's personality and political activity as much as anyone, but it is clear from technical PoV that he did logical things. Actually, the fact that he was mistaken and still managed to not bankrupt Tesla is saying something about his skills.
imtringued 9mo ago
It's the same with his humanoid robot. Instead of building yet another useless hype machine, why not simply do vertical integration and build your own robot arms? You have a guaranteed customer (yourself) and once you have figured out the design, you can start selling to external customers.
- hobofan 9mo ago
  > why not simply do vertical integration and build your own robot arms? Robot arms are neither a low-volume unique/high-cost market (SpaceX), nor a high-volume/high-margin business (Tesla). On top of that it's already a quite crowded space.
- rsynnott 9mo ago
  Because making boring industrial machinery doesn't sustain a PE ratio of about 300. Only promising the world does that.

by mft_ 9mo ago

spiderfarmer 9mo ago

The ways in which Musk dug himself in when experts predicted this exact scenario confirmed to me he was not as smart as some people think he was. He seemed to have drank his own koolaid back then. And if he still doesn’t realize and admit he is wrong then he is just plain dumb. Pride is standing in the way of first principles.

d_luaz 9mo ago
Will there be major difference in ride experience when you take a Waymo vs Robotaxi?
- tstrimple 9mo ago
  Considering one requires a human babysitter and one doesn’t on top of the accident rates between them it should be an easy yes.
  - d_luaz 9mo ago
    Fair. So in a sense, the lidar vs camera argument ultimately can be publicly assess/proven through human babysitter (regulation permit) and accident rates. or maybe user adoptions.
TOMDM 9mo ago
Musk has for a long time now been convinced that all problems in this space are solvable via vision. Same deal with his comments about how all anti-air military capability will be dominated by optical sensors.
brightball 9mo ago
I think there’s room for both points of view here. Going all in on visual processing means you can use it anywhere a person can go in any other technology, Optimus robots are just one example. And he’s not wrong that roads and driving laws are all built around human visual processing. The recent example of a power outage in SF where lidar powered Waymo’s all stopped working when the traffic lights were out and Tesla self driving continued operating normally makes a good case for the approach.
- NewJazz 9mo ago
  Didn't waymo stop operating simply because they aren't as cavalier as Tesla, and they have much more to lose since they are actually self driving instead of just driver assistance? Was the lidar/vision difference actually significant?
  - brightball 9mo ago
    The reports I’ve read said that some continued to attempt to navigate with the street lights out, but that the vehicles all have a remote confirmation where they try to call home to confirm what to do. That ended up self DDoSing Waymo causing vehicles to stop in the middle of the road and at intersections with their hazards on. So to clarify, it wasn’t entirely a lidar problem it was an need to call home to navigate.
- sroussey 9mo ago
  > roads and driving laws are all built around human visual processing. And people die all the time. > The recent example of a power outage in SF where lidar powered Waymo’s all stopped working when the traffic lights were out and Tesla self driving continued operating normally makes a good case for the approach. Huh? Waymo is responsible for injury, so all their cars called home at the same time DOS themselves rather than kill someone. Tesla makes no responsibility and does nothing. I can’t see the logic the brings vision only as having anything to do lights out. At all.
  - tonyhb 9mo ago
moogly 9mo ago
> And if he still doesn’t realize and admit he is wrong then he is just plain dumb. The absolute genius made sure that he can't back out without making it bleedingly obvious that old cars can never be upgraded for a LIDAR-based stack. Right now he's avoiding a company-killing class action suit by stalling, hoping people will get rid of HW3 cars, (and you can add HW4 cars soon too) and pretending that those cars will be updated, but if you also need to have LIDAR sensors, you're massively screwed.
SequoiaHope 9mo ago
I wonder how much of their trouble comes from other failures in their plan (avoiding the use of pre-made maps and single city taxi services in favor of a system intended to drive in unseen cities) vs how much comes from vision. There are concerning failure modes from vision alone but it’s not clear that’s actually the reason for the failure. Waymo built an expensive safe system that is a taxi first and can only operate on certain areas, and then they ran reps on those areas for a decade. Tesla specifically decided not to use the taxi-first approach, which does make sense since they want to sell cars. One of the first major failures of their approach was to start selling pre-orders for self driving. If they hadn’t, they would not have needed to promise it would work everywhere, and could have pivoted to single city taxi services like the other companies, or added lidar. But certainly it all came from Musk’s hubris, first to set out to solve the self driving in all conditions using only vision, and then to start selling it before it was done, making it difficult to change paths once so much had been promised.
lostlogin 9mo ago
> The ways in which Musk dug himself in when experts predicted This had happened a load of times with him. It seemed to ramp up around paedo sub, and I wonder what went on with him at that time.
- linohh 9mo ago
  Behaviour that would be consistent with stimulant abuse.
mft_ 9mo ago
> The ways in which Musk dug himself in when experts predicted this exact scenario confirmed to me he was not as smart as some people think he was. History is replete with smart people making bad decisions. Someone can be exceptionally smart (in some domains) and have made a bad decision. > He seemed to have drank his own koolaid back then. Indeed; but he was on a run of success, based on repeatedly succeeding deliberately against established expertise, so I imagine that Koolaid was pretty compelling.
Yizahi 9mo ago
To be frank, no one had a crystal ball back then, and stuff could go either way with uncertainty in both hardware and software capabilities. Sure Lidars were better even back then, but the bet was on catching up on them. I hate Elon's personality and political activity as much as anyone, but it is clear from technical PoV that he did logical things. Actually, the fact that he was mistaken and still managed to not bankrupt Tesla is saying something about his skills.

imtringued 9mo ago

It's the same with his humanoid robot. Instead of building yet another useless hype machine, why not simply do vertical integration and build your own robot arms? You have a guaranteed customer (yourself) and once you have figured out the design, you can start selling to external customers.

hobofan 9mo ago
> why not simply do vertical integration and build your own robot arms? Robot arms are neither a low-volume unique/high-cost market (SpaceX), nor a high-volume/high-margin business (Tesla). On top of that it's already a quite crowded space.
rsynnott 9mo ago
Because making boring industrial machinery doesn't sustain a PE ratio of about 300. Only promising the world does that.