I think Elon's prediction was that LIDAR was too expensive and will stay too expensive.
In a sense he was right, LIDAR prices did not drop and I wonder why that is?
I am much more curious about the next ten years. If we can bring down the cost of a LIDAR unit into parity with camera systems[1], I think I know the answer. But I thought that 10 years ago and it did not happen so I wonder what is the real roadblock to make LIDAR cheap.
[1] Which it won't replace, of course. What it will change is that it makes the LIDAR a regular component, not an exceptionally expensive component.
2) make it right
3) make it fast (or cheap in this case)
Elon thinks his genius intellect allows him to skip to #3.
It’s nothing.
Anything except the lowest end car will cost $20K or more, so $200 is one percent of that price.
True self-driving is still a baby that needs to grow and cannot even compete against an adult human with 30+ years of experience. As self driving actually forms to that level the market will grown.
A two to four ton vehicle that can accelerate like a Ferrari and go over 100 mph, fully self-driving, and 'a few hundred dollars is way too much'.
Disagree. Even as they are dialing back the claims, which may or may not affect how people use the vehicles. These things respond too quickly for flaky senses based on human sensoriums.
Once a product starts to sell after initial design, time is take to reduce the development cost. Try to reuse parts or replace part A with B. A machine from early 2018 can be little different than ones going out the door late 2018. _Kaizen_ was coined for this.
My point of view of when mass reduction in cost will be when self-driving is cost effect secondary feature on all Toyota vehicles. I see that as the litmus test for knowing that self-driving has reached true utility.
Also well designed vehicles would need a multi-sensor system to operate in self-driving mode. A human operating a car is using multi-sensor intake. Lack of multi-sensor in humans prevent them from operating a vehicle. Blind people need a secondary sensory input like walking stick. Vehicles need a multi-sensor system to prevent harming, mutilating, and killing the passengers and pedestrians.