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Comment by weinzierl | Hacker News Reader

$200 is still a lot when a bunch of cameras cost maybe $20.

$200 to enable better FSD vs a decade of struggle to get FSD only partially working with $20 cameras. Which one do you think is more expensive overall?

The fact that we still do not have a significant number of cars with LIDAR on our streets somewhat proves which approach the auto industry considers viable for business.

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.

The fact that the only working self driving system uses LIDAR might say even more.

1) make it work

2) make it right

3) make it fast (or cheap in this case)

Elon thinks his genius intellect allows him to skip to #3.

> $200 is still a lot when a bunch of cameras cost maybe $20.

Anything except the lowest end car will cost $20K or more, so $200 is one percent of that price.

I mean, I'd rather be building a $30,200 robotaxi that works than a $30,020 robotaxi that doesn't.

You won't get rich with a $30,200 robotaxi, you won't even have a viable business. The game is the mass market and there the usual unit of currency is not cents, its tenth of cents.

Even if your robotaxi only manages 2000 rides that’s still down to just 10 cents a ride to cover the cost of hardware.

It’s nothing.

All taxis are variants of mass produced cars, that will not be different for robotaxis. The mass market is the enabler and there every tenth of cent counts.

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