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Comment by frik | Hacker News Reader

Tesla is using a modified Nvidia self-driving platform too for Autopilot v2, available in early 2017.

Nvidia demonstrated their platform with many sensors like 10 cameras, ultra-sonic sensors and at least one LIDAR.

Where as Tesla is using a sensor mix with radar, ultra-sonic sensors and like 7 cameras - the LIDAR is probably still too expensive even for a 70+k car (the big one you know from Google cars cost $70k, the smallest one cost at least 7k).

It will be interesting to learn about Audi's sensor mix, and what LIDAR product they choose.

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250$ LIDAR is on the horizon http://driverless.wonderhowto.com/news/quanergys-new-250-sol...

Velodyne is working on a 50$ solid state LiDAR.

The problem is that those solid state LiDARs have missed shipment targets many times and they also aren't equivalent to $60K lidar systems.

The smaller sensors aren't the same as the giant sensor that goes on top of the car, but ~10 of them can give you comparable coverage for self-driving purposes (assuming they work similar to other smaller LIDAR sensors such as what ibeo makes, hard to say before the product actually ships). And a few thousand dollars is easily affordable for luxury cars; think of it as a typical upgrade like consumers pay for navigation packages, stereos, leather interior, etc.

With regards to the missed shipments - I agree, that is a red flag. And when a company gives a timeline, and then that passes and they change their answer to "soon" it's concerning. Of course, it's CES right now - maybe someone will make an announcement in a few days. Last year Quanergy hyped up their sensor, but when they were pressed it turns out their demo sensor was actually not solid state.

But I struggle to name the expensive element of a LiDAR system. I suspect the previous, reletivley low vumes might have contributed to much of the cost.

Definitely interesting. Solid-state-LIDAR is the break-through that makes then affordable. The current-gen big spinning LIDARs are too cumbersome in harsh real world environment, if you think of mass deployment in cars.

> And if you're worried about the sensors being vulnerable to hacking—Eldada says they've engineered the sensor with seven layers of protection to make sure the system can't be tricked.

A seven layer seal? That could surely only be broken by the darkest of magics.

Seven horcruxes.

Seven proxies perhaps?

Who is the attacker in this scenario? The car owner?

Let's hope each of this layer is not guarded by admin:admin credentials.

Nah, they got this - it is admin:changeme

iptables rules that require each packet to jump through 7 chains before being allowed in.

Well, $5 LIDAR is 'on the horizon' too[1], but I will believe it when I can hold one... but I really, really want to believe.

1: https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/15/new-lidar-package-makes-it...

>Tesla...available in early 2017.

One claim versus another, both optimistic. I'm not going to believe Audi or Tesla until I see it.

A LIDAR is available off Amazon as we speak for < $500 and that's end user price. I won't link because I am not spamming but B01L1T32PI. Surely it's not the bees knees but not $7K for sure.

I love that in 2017, we can just buy stuff like this on Amazon!

It's from a vacuum cleaner robot. It can only scan 2D up to 6m. It's a toy compared to a automobile grade LIDAR that can scan 3D 360 degree with a fast scan rate.

> available in early 2017.

Enhanced Autopilot available mid December 2016... oh wait.

I believe they are using 'HD cloud maps', RADAR, and deep learning vision processing _instead_ of LIDAR.

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