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Comment by keyKeeper | Hacker News Reader

There are laser measurers sold for a few buck on Temu. Robot vacuums sold for few hundred dollars have Lidars that map out the room in a seconds.

Is there any actual technical reason why automobile Lidar be expensive? Just combine visual processing with single point sampler that will feed points of interest and accurate model of the surroundings will be built.

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Most spinning robovac LIDARs are 2D. Most solid state robovac LIDARs are like 8x8 array of laser pointers.

Automotive LIDARs are like, 128x64[px] for production models or 1920x1080[px] for experimental models with GbE and/or HDMI-equivalents-of-industry outputs. Totally different technologies.

Probably one factor is range. The article talks about 200-300m range, a robot vacuum has maybe 10m best case?

For example this one has 120m range with 1cm accuracy and its 15 euros: https://www.temu.com/bg-en/-digital-laser-distance-meter-50m...

Is the 1 cm spec 1σ (or less) or worst-case? It’s a safety-critical application.

Outside in the sun against other cars or inside against a wall?

I know that automotive parts of the standard requirement to withstand 80°C (or 120°C for military use). A robot vacuum working in a living room can probably be made cheaper because it does not have to face as harsh environments?

Also, range is probably a factor. In a living room, you probably need something like 20m max. You car should "see" farther.

Not only that but vibrations play a big part as well, especially on ICE vehicles.

Vibrations are surely an issue with electromechanical systems but hardly with electronics. There are plenty of cheap electronic accessories for cars and you can observe that those keep functioning for years.

Please keep politics out of it.

ICE = internal combustion engine

Sure, these are the assumptions but silicon is silicon, copper is copper and solder is solder. They don't use easy melting electronics in vacuums and hardened stuff in cars, the tech is about the same unless it is supposed to work in highly radioactive environment. The plastics are different but car interiors are full of plastics, so its unlikely that the costs of temperature resistant plastics needed for this is more than a cupholder.

As for the range, again pretty powerful lasers are sold for sub 10SUD prices on retail. I am sure that there must be higher calibration and precision requirements as the distance increase but is it really order of magnitudes higher? 120 meters laser measurer with 1cm accuracy is 15 Euros on Temu and that thing has an LCD screen and a battery as a handheld device. How much distance do you actually need?

Oh my god so many reasons. I don't feel like getting fully into it but that's kind of like asking why you can't use your kitchen scale to measure highway traffic as it drives over it.

to add to the rest of the comments, a reliability standard also adds on cost. The scale is different, but compare a car bolt vs manned space mission craft's bolt.

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