It’s also possible that they were so far behind Waymo in the journey to FSD that they weren’t yet at a point where multiple sensors would make a significant difference.
Just my interpretation, but it felt to me like a hail mary because they were fully committed to being the first mover. Waiting around for LiDAR prices to come down would have meant that Waymo would have beat them.
The thing they need to improve and are doing so rapidly is actual trajectory policy calculations.
And that’s not going to get better with more sensors seeing the same things it already sees.
As someone who drives a Tesla with the FSD beta, the vehicle has been getting progressively better since 2018.
It’s drives smoother and brakes more predictably dive they stopped using the front radar.
As someone who owned a 2019 Tesla and who owns a 2023 Tesla, the older car had better autopilot. It was starting to degrade in 2020. The new one is worse. Phantom braking was quite rare in 2019. The very first night I drove home the new car, it phantom braked on a lonely, empty stretch of I-5.
I want the radar back.
Essentially that trying to utilize multiple sensors cripples any progress (given that resources will never be infinite).
For example, if your lidar sensor is 99.999% percent sure there is an obstacle in front of you, surely it's helpful to take that information into account, even if it is a tiny bit uncertain/noisy.
More data in any situation where bandwidth is already maximized will lead to entropy and noise. However, if the capabilities were there to process all of that data in low latency scenarios with headroom to spare, surely adding additional sensors and data points would lead to a more complete model of spatial awareness for the car.
That's all hypothetical and reliant on ignoring the realities of running a business and tech development lol
Fusion is hard. As hard as getting humans to agree. Been there. In both situations.
And of course you can concentrate on improving one echo chamber, err single sensor. But you can never come past its fundamental limitations.
Unlike Waymo who doesn't care about selling cars to people to drive daily. No one going to care that the taxi they are taking looks ugly as long as it get them to the place they are going for cheaper. The cost is also a less of a factor due to them being able to produce an income by charging people to ride in them.
Why not? There are production cars with lidar now that isn't the big spinning thing on top of the car.