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Comment by kibwen | Hacker News Reader

This is off by orders of magnitude. BYD is buying LIDAR units for their cars for $140.

That's likely closer to reality now, but that's not counting the cost for R&D to add it to the car, any additional costs that come with it besides the LIDAR hardware, plus the added cost to install it.

All of that combined is probably closer to $1k than to $140.

And, again, that's - what - 10 years after Tesla originally made the decision to go vision only.

It wasn't a terrible idea at the time, but they should've pivoted at some point.

They could've had a massive lead in data if they pivoted as late as 3 years ago, when the total cost would probably be under $2.5k, and that could've led to a positive feedback loop, cause they'd probably have a system better than Waymo by now.

Instead, they've got a pile of garbage, and no path to improve it substantially.

I can't be sure, but I doubt Tesla is spending less than $140 on their cameras. High fidelity, high frame rate color cameras aren't actually cheap...

Not all LIDARs are equal. Just because BYD is spending $140 on a LIDAR system does not mean it's the same quality as the Waymo system reported to cost $75k almost a decade ago, or, especially, the same quality as the ones in use today.

They might be!

But I doubt it.

I don't know enough about Tesla's cameras, but it's not implausible to think there are LIDARs of low enough quality that you'd be better off with a good quality camera for your sensor.

Again, I doubt this is the case with BYDs cameras.

But it's still worth pointing out, I think.

My point is, BYD's LIDAR system costing $x is only one small part of the conversation.

I would say a $140 LIDAR system that’s currently being used in production cars [somewhere] is better than a $0 non-existent LIDAR system. Pair a cheap LIDAR system with some nice cameras and perhaps you can make up much of the difference in software.

Well maybe Tesla should adopt it then.

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