All while Waymo is expanding to more and more cities, including Detroit where it will deal with snow and ice. Waymo is years ahead of Tesla in the self-driving race. It's possible Tesla never succeeds in launching a truly self-driving car.
Tesla have been operating as a product business, and cost reduction of that product was key to scale and profitability. I completely understand why they have focused on optical sensors for autopilot, lidar was always going to be impossibly expensive for a consumer product.
Waymo on the other hand have always been aiming to build a service business and that changes the model significantly, they need to get to market and gain operational experience. Doing that with more expensive equipment to move faster is exactly what was needed. They can worry about cost of building their cars later, much later.
Everything is expensive without scale. But lidar will be very cost effective, when scaled to millions upon millions of cars annually.
And with scale, there are reasons to optimise, reduce cost, etc. Large volumes of sales draws more research. Research to reduce cost.
Self driving is a long game. Decades.
Lidar production costs have already scaled. Now it need more miniaturization (which will help with production costs even more) and something against diffraction.
To each their own, but it's possible having sensor bumps on your car become a status symbol that indicates you can afford a private driver.
> not sure you can have it on a convertible etc.
Radically different car shapes are possible when human driving never happens or is very rare. Maybe a small van (like a private lounge on wheels, or a train observation car) with a huge panoramic sunroof becomes en vogue.
Due to its choice to use LIDAR. Waymo has tested a working system using cameras only, but they choose to use LIDAR because it is safer and does not significantly change cost.
> Waymo on the other hand have always been aiming to build a service business
Waymo's roadmap (from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXLgzP3gv2k):
1) Ride hailing 2) Local delivery 3) Long haul trucking 4) Personally owned cars
Is step 4 still considered a service? It will almost certainly require a subscription.
This isn't the main factor. The main factor is Waymo only does this one thing. Tesla has been: building electric cars and forcing all car makers to do the same; building charging networks; funding and releasing free of charge battery tech research improvements; and doing self driving, and all of it while trying to make a profit to keep running. Waymo is funded by Google, which has infinitely deep ads-spying-on-you pockets. Which is just much, much easier.
Building a self-driving car is more difficult as evidenced by no one having delivered one except for Google. Many companies (including astronomically rich ones like Apple) have tried.
Tesla is trying to get in at ~$20k per operational taxi, with everything made in house.
Assuming Tesla can figure out it's FSD (and convince people it's safe), they could dramatically undercut Waymo on price, while still being profitable. If a Waymo to the airport is $20, and Robotaxi is $5, Tesla will win, regardless of anything else (assuming equal safety).
I'm _way_ out of my depth though.
LiDARs at the time Tesla decided against them were $75k per unit. Currently they are $9,300 per car with some promising innovations around solid state LiDAR which could push per-unit down to hundreds of dollars.
Tesla went consumer first so at the time, a car would've likely cost $200k+ so it makes sense why they didn't integrate it. I believe their idea was to kick off a flywheel effect on training data.
You’re sending your own illumination energy into the environment. This has to be large enough that you can detect the small fraction of it that is reflected back at your sensor, while not being hazardous to anything it hits, notably eyeballs, but also other lidar sensors and cameras around you. To see far down the road, you have to put out quite a lot of energy.
Also, lidar data is not magic: it has its own issues and techniques to master. Since you need vision as well, you have at least two long range sensor technologies to get your head around. Plus the very real issue of how to handle their apparent disagreements.
The evidence from human drivers is that you don’t absolutely need an active illumination sensor to be as good as a human.
The decision to skip LiDAR is based on managing complexity as well as cost, both of which could reduce risk getting to market.
That’s the argument. I don’t know who is right. Waymo has fielded taxis, while Tesla is driving more but easier autonomous miles.
The acid test: I don’t use the partial autonomy in my Tesla today.
It'll always be a challenge to get ground truth training data from the real world, since you can't know for sure what was really out there causing the disagreeing sensor readings. Synthetic data addresses this, but requires good error models for both modalities.
On the latter, an interesting approach that has been explored a little is to SOAK your synthetic sensor training data in noise so that the details you get wrong in your sensor model are washed out by the grunge you impose, and only the deep regularities shine through. Avoids overfitting to the sim. This is Jakobi's 'Radical Envelope of Noise Hypothesis' [1], a lovely idea since it means you might be able to write a cheap and cheerful sim that does better than a 'good' one. Always enjoyed that.
[1] https://www.sussex.ac.uk/informatics/cogslib/reports/csrp/cs...
Aren't human drivers the same empirical question?
That paper is really interesting, thanks!
They optimized for cost first and may never get it to work.
There is a lot to unwrap there, but that's what he said. I believe at that moment he was in ML talent recruitment mode, and yet he admitted the true scale of this issue that Tesla faces given the vision-only direction.
A normal approach is:
1) Make it work
2) Make it right(/safe)
3) Make it fast/cheap
Is there some technological thing about LiDAR that would prevent similar cost reductions? Or, is it just the philosophical difference over pre-mapping, and not doing so?
> Or, is it just the philosophical difference over pre-mapping, and not doing so?
It seems to be a "burn the ships" style bet that the Tesla engineers will get to camera-only self driving first without having ever relied on LIDAR. It's equally as likely (or moreso) that Waymo could get there first with better ground truth data from the LIDAR.
at $138 I'm not sure there's much need to go cheaper.
With Starlink, there was no baseline consumer product to sell before getting it working.
I just don't buy this at all
>"The new iPad Pro adds ... a breakthrough LiDAR Scanner that delivers cutting-edge depth-sensing capabilities, opening up more pro workflows and supporting pro photo and video apps." [1]
Yes of course the specs of LiDAR on a car are higher but if apple are putting it on iPads I just don't buy the theory that an affordable car-spec LiDAR is totally out of the realm of the possible. One of the things istr Elon Musk saying is that one of the reasons they got rid of the LiDAR is the problem of sensor fusion - what do you do when the LiDAR says one thing and the vision says something different.
[1] https://www.apple.com/uk/newsroom/2020/03/apple-unveils-new-...
Higher specs can make all the difference. A model rocket engine vs Space Shuttle main engine, for an extreme example. Or a pistol round vs an anti-armor tank round. The cost of the former says nothing at all about the latter.
https://www.volvocars.com/uk/support/car/ex90/article/47d2c9...
From your linked page:
> Important Use responsibly
The lidar and features that can rely on it are supplements to safe driving practices. They do not reduce or replace the need for the driver to stay attentive and focused on driving safely.
Safe for the eyes
The lidar is not harmful to the eyes.
Lidar light waves can damage external cameras
Do not point a camera directly at the lidar. The lidar, being a laser based system, uses infrared light waves that may cause damage to certain camera devices. This can include smartphones or phones equipped with a camera.
I suppose one example might include fixed security cameras with IR-based night vision capability.
Waymo can just add the cameras exactly the way Tesla has, and train based only on that information.
Now it has tons and tons of data, they could gradually remove the Lidar on cities that they've driven over and over again. IF driving without Lidar is worth it... maybe it isn't even worth it and we should pursue using Lidars in order to further reduce accidents.
Meanwhile people use Tesla sporadically in a few spots they consider safe, they will always have data that isn't useful at all, as it can already drive on those spots.
--
Another thing, we can definitely afford to have Lidars on every car, if that would make our cars safer.
Imagine if China does a huge supply chain of Lidars, I bet the cost would be very tiny. And this is supposing there aren't any more automation and productivity gains in the future, which is very unlikely.
Lidar production just doesn't have that big scale, because it's a very tiny market as of now. With scale, those prices would fall like batteries and other hardware have fallen with the years.
TLDR: Tesla lost badly
Why does it then follow that Tesla will never release a truly self driving car? That makes no sense.
Is it somehow impossible for an achievement to be reached by more than one person/company?
Of course not. The hyperbole is not needed, and does nothing but remove credibility from your statement
It is possible to fool a camera with some specs of dust at close range. They have interior safety camera, and everyone I know put a cover on it all the time.
Never is a long time, but it's possible that Tesla adopts LIDAR before it gets camera-only to work.
There are all kind of historical technological dead-end examples (e.g. planes that flap their wings).
Does anyone now care how much SpaceX changed their reuse strategy for the falcon 9? Of course not. It only matters that they found a way that works.
Ummmm yes. That is the definition of doing something difficult.
There's nothing wrong with that in a vacuum, but it's objectively a different story when the company chooses to turn it into an enormous financial liability. That is a massive practical difference, with extremely pertinent example being Tesla vs SpaceX. SpaceX has had enormous success running a hardware rich testing regime, and they're very willing to move fast and break things... but NEVER with customer payloads. Which is how that aphorism was supposed to be applied. You can and often should be extremely aggressive exploring the entire problem space in testing before you move into final build and then production, but once you're dealing with customers then it has to be done very differently.
Tesla absolutely could have experimented to their heart's desire without making any financial promises let alone actually entering into end customer contracts and taking hundreds of millions of dollars in preorder money for a future feature on ass-pulled timelines. But that's not the path they took, and that leaves them in a much uglier position when it comes to reacting to data and changing their approach because they've already locked in hardware to paying customers. That's the exact opposite of what SpaceX or any normal responsible company does.
They have very large legal issues right now. Legal issues that are going to cost them tens of billions, depending on the legal proceedings.
They also have $41 billion in the bank…
It doesn't have to. The money's been made. The stock's been pumped. Mission accomplished.
As for calling it fraud, well the government's closed. The moose out front should have told 'ya.
Argue with that as you like but Google _loves_ to sit around on good ideas and, in my opinion, hamstring them away from pushing their products to commercialization.
The same with robots.
Before they sell it to some competitor, they will shelf it and will bet on nvidias autonomoes car platform.
Pure anti-Capitalist nonsense. Companies fail. Let them die.
Companies like BYD and Tesla are positioned well for that if they can get their AV functionality proven out as both are fully integrated car manufacturers.
Waymo doesn't have in-house manufacturing and is, to my knowledge, purely software so they have lots of vendors along with a relatively low output of vehicles. Their 2025 and 2026 plan is to build 2,500 new cars per year. Each Waymo car currently costs over $100k. Even if Tesla was pushing out Model Ys as their robotaxi platform, they could flood the market very easily in both scale and price per mile _if_ UFSD (unsupervised FSD) was proven.
I think self driving will be a commodity in the long term and every car will be able to do it. If Tesla will solve it purly by cameras, every other car manufacturer will be able to add this too. Perhaps a few years later but they will be able to do it too.
So Tesla has to leverage the first mover advantage, and they are loosing this already.
And while Musk says robot taxis are fundamental to tesla, the taxi market is actually not that big. All the broad nice areas like small cities etc. will buy a small fleet of cars and i don't think the price point of a Tesla will that crazy much cheaper than whatever everyone else will have that it will be obvous for everyone to just buy the Tesla model.
I alone will not use Tesla alone for Musk. Despite that, people might want to pay a euro more to have a SVU to have space or higher entry point than choosing the cheapest Tesla model to drive with.
Tesla can't flood the market very easily. If they could, they would have done it. And its expected that Tesla will not suddenly find the solution to their problems. They are optimizing away the next 9 at the 9x% reliability. Every additional 9 will take the same amount as the previous 9. And the nines are quite relevant if you look how many km these cars will have to drive.
Most Americans don't seem to consider the cost of their transportation in the slightest.
> Most Americans don't seem to consider the cost of their transportation in the slightest.
Time is also an important cost. It would take us about 90 minutes from home to school to drop off my kid by bus (plus walking, since no bus stops near the school).
By car, it is 15 minutes worst case if I hit all red lights.
By car we leave home 8:15, kid is in school on time and I'm in my work meetings easily by 9:00.
By bus, we'd have to leave home at 6am and I might just barely make it in time for 9am meetings, or often be late.
So yes, people do consider the cost of transportation but it is not just dollars, also time.
The context of the previous comments was clearly about monetary cost though, not other kinds of cost. There's also obviously environmental, health outcomes, etc, costs in question.
Of course there will be other factors like amenities.
Personally, I think 'style' is going to be a non-insignificant factor to it as well. Few normies will want to get out of a 'nerd car' that has bulbous sensors all over it if they can pay a bit more to have a cooler looking ride, it's the Prius effect.
The style thing is just my opinion though but price will be the major one. People will tolerate an ugly robotaxi if it is significantly cheaper or more convenient.
Have you considered that Americans might value their time differently than you? That might change your equation.
Do other people not receive the same psychic damage from driving, especially during rush hour? Hopefully you're not texting during that 30 minutes that you're driving, but regardless, it's really draining to drive. Advanced lane guidance that actually works is amazing tho.
That 1 hour train commute's a nice way to unwind while doing something much more relaxing; reading a book, writing poems, making jewelry, knitting, writing letters to friends, etc
That's not to say every train commute's automatically better, 2 trains, a bus, and a tram over 1 hour would be annoying timed. I'm just saying wall clock time isn't the end all, be all metric.
This is what PP said:
> > Have you considered that Americans might value their time differently than you?
Not random other things, specifically time
Time is a lot more valuable than the other things. If I'm billing $250/hr and the bus round trip takes 3 hours, that's $750 per day lost. That completely dwarfs any of the other costs like car payment (which you don't need - buy a used car) and maintenance/insurance.
Not only do people tend to ignore (or even actively vote against) cheaper options they tend to then massively overbuy their more expensive form of transportation, at least if what they cared about was cost.
But it's not about cost. It's about comfort, style, lifestyle image projection, personal enjoyment, and more. Cost barely figures into it for so many.
If I were to ask the people I know "how much do you spend on transportation monthly on average", most probably wouldn't come close to having an answer. Many might be able to say their car payment. I doubt many would come close to factor in all the rest of their costs. It's crazy to me to see people balk at a $3 train fare to go into the city, "that's expensive!". Then when we calculate the cost for them to drive their oversized truck into town and back it's more expensive.
> If Americans were price conscious about transport they wouldn't be driving $60,000, 15mpg, oversized pickup trucks to go drop off their kids at daycare and commute to their office job, they'd be riding the bus.
In reality, those are not the only two choices.
Riding the bus is extremely expensive unless your time is free, so that needs to be taken into account.
One can get a cheap efficient car and have all the time-saving benefits of a car and all the cost-saving benefits of a cheap one.
They could, but they often don't.
The top selling passenger vehicles in the US are a pickup truck, a pickup truck, a small SUV, a pickup truck, a mid-sized SUV, a mid-sized SUV, a pickup truck, then finally a full-sized sedan, then a pick up truck, and then a compact car. I guess we're just all farmers and off-roaders here in the US. Maybe one day we'll get paved roads to commute to our office-based farming jobs, 'till then I guess we really need all that ground clearance.
You think all these people are basing these purchasing decisions of buying those pickup trucks entirely because its the more cost effective option to go get groceries and go to their office job?
Finacialization is what made $65,000 cars "cheap".
That aside, the cost of a Waymo is estimated to be between $150 and $200k. A model 3 based Tesla robotaxi doesn’t cost less than $20k…
The car itself is a price point of 10 to 40 cent pro km which has impact on the journey for sure but a lot less that it might be the reason.
if you tell me, that i can take the saver car and pay 1 euro more with a 20 euro fair, I wouldn't care.
Nonetheless, economy of scale has happened already at lidar and continues to happen.
If tesla can't get it running properly in bad weather but waymo can, they can also compensate it just by driving at situations were tesla doesn't want to drive.
But hey its just brainstorming at this point as tesla is not close enough to waymo to compare it properly. And while waymo exists, plenty of other companies exist too doing this. Nvidia itself will keep building their car platform which will level the playfield even more.
Whatever market selfdriving cars are, it will be split between everyone and no tesla will not just 'win' this. It will be a race to the bottom for everyone reducing the revenue to a commodity.
Tesla is just on the wrong side of that bet.
Agreed. Waymo has a working self-driving vehicle that currently operates in many cities. Tesla has a buggy tech demo in a portion of Austin.
> the Tesla robotaxi vehicle is probably cost 10x less, at least.
Very unlikely. Waymo vehicles also carry twice as many people.