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Interestingly, there have been people in the LIDAR industry predicting costs like this for many years. I heard numbers like $250 per vehicle back in 2012 [1] O
by michaelt 8mo ago
Interestingly, there have been people in the LIDAR industry predicting costs like this for many years. I heard numbers like $250 per vehicle back in 2012 [1]
Of course, ambitious pricing like this is all about economies of scale - sensors that are used in production vehicles are ordered by the million, and that lowers the costs massively. When the huge orders didn't materialise, the economies of scale and low prices didn't materialise either.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20161013165833/http://content.usatoday.com/communities/driveon/post/2012/06/google-discloses-costs-of-its-driverless-car-tests/1#.UapgNWRgaBy https://web.archive.org/web/20161013165833/http://content.us...
- small_model 8mo agoAlso 'Luminar Technologies, a prominent U.S. lidar manufacturer, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in December 2025' LIDAR is useful in a small set of scenarios (calibration and validation) but do not bet the farm on it or make it the centre piece of your sensor suite.
- UltraSane 8mo agoLidar is critical for any autonomous vehicle. It turns out a very accurate 3D point cloud of the environment is very useful for self driving. Crazy, I know.
- servo_sausage 8mo agoUseful but not at all required. Camera + radar is sufficient for driving, and camera+ USS is fine for parking. Radar is just cheaper than the number of cameras and compute, it's also not really a strict requirement. Look at how the current cars fuck up, it's mostly navigation, context understanding, and tight manoeuvres. Lidar gives you very little in these areas
- UltraSane 8mo agoAll of the actually WORKING self driving systems use LIDAR. This is not a coincidence.
- small_model 8mo agoLike Waymo? (https://dmnews.co.uk/waymo-robotaxi-spotted-unable-to-cross-puddle-in-los-angeles/ https://dmnews.co.uk/waymo-robotaxi-spotted-unable-to-cross-...) 17 years after betting the farm on LIDAR the solution fails to navigate a puddle. Sorry but they bet on the wrong technology, Tesla has overtaken them with multi camera and NN solution.
- UltraSane 8mo agoYour conclusion from a single incident is a bad inference. One vehicle getting confused by a puddle (likely a sensor fusion edge case or mapping artifact, not a fundamental LIDAR failure) doesn't indict the technology. Tesla's cameras have produces vastly more failures. Waymo has driven tens of millions of autonomous miles with a serious injury/fatality rate dramatically lower than human drivers. The actual data shows the technology works. Tesla FSD still requires active driver supervision and is not legally or technically a robotaxi system. Comparing them as if they're at parity is wrong. LIDAR gives direct metric depth with no inference required. Camera-only systems must infer depth from 2D images using neural networks, which introduces failure modes LIDAR doesn't have. Radar is very valuable when LIDAR and cameras give ambiguous data. What metrics has Telsa overtaken Waymo? Deployed robotaxi revenue miles? No. Disengagement rates? No published comparable data. Safety per mile in driverless operation? No.
- small_model 8mo agoA Tesla wouldn't stop for a puddle. Also its not locked to a small geofenced area (people have driven coast to coast without a single intervention on FSD including parking spot to parking spot) when I can buy a Waymo vehicle that does this then Waymo would have caught up with Tesla.
- 8mo ago
- schiffern 8mo agoThe same Luminar from the Mark Rober video? https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2025/03/17/youtuber-mark-rober-tests-cameras-vs-lidar-and-gets-it-wrong/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2025/03/17/youtub...
- UltraSane 8mo agoThis is very wrong. LIDAR scanners have revolutionized surveying by enabling rapid, high-precision 3D mapping of terrain and infrastructure, capturing millions of data points per second. LIDAR can penetrate dense vegetation, allowing accurate, ground-level, mapping in forested or obstructed areas. Drone mounted LIDAR has become very popular. Tripod mounted LIDAR scanners are very commonly used on construction sites. Handhels LIDAR scanners can map the inside of buildings with incredible accuracy. This is very commonly used to create digital twins of factories.
- jcattle 8mo agoAnd none of this is on the order of magnitude that consumer automotive would have. The EU requires every new car to have Autonomos Emergency Braking. If LiDAR becomes cheaper than radar, this is a potential market of millions.
- StephenSmith 8mo agoAlso, MicroVision, the company in OP's article bought the IP from Luminar. This feels like a circular venture capital scam. Luminar originally went public via SPAC and made a bunch of people very wealthy before ultimately failing.
- newsclues 8mo agoEconomies of scale when they are in phones?