Hacker News Reader

Autonomous driving is such a big opportunity, that trying to do it wihtout LIDARs is a giant premature optimization.

Just like trying to make fully automated assembly plants.

Whatever edge it may give on sensor cost savings in the long run, it has a steep penalty in time to market.

Even if eventually they make it without LIDARs, guess what? The competitors with successful fleets won’t be too far behind.

View on HN

If lidar was available for a few thousand, I think they would have used it. But it was much much more expensive in 2012 when I got my first one. Now they are kind of committed because they promised it would work for the generation 2.5 hardware in the model 3. So if they can't make it work, they'd have to refund 5k for a lot of sellers, or pay for upgrading to new hardware. I have gen 2 hardware, but I kind of doubt that it will be enough for autodriving.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com