‘Lidar is lame’: why Elon Musk’s vision for a self-driving Tesla taxi faltered

4.20 is not a cannabis meme, it's a Nazi meme.

To Quote a Song with a similar sounding word: *Lovely Scam! Wonderful Scam!* *Lovely Scam! Wonderful Scam!* *Sca-a-a-a-a-a-a-am* *Sca-a-a-a-a-a-a-am* *Sca-a-a-a-a-a-a-am* *Sca-a-a-a-a-a-a-am* *Lovely Scam! (Lovely Scam!)* *Lovely Scam! (Lovely Scam!)* *Lovely Scam!* *Scam, Scam, Scam, Scam!*

Truth from the article: “Musk’s insistence on camera-only technology has landed Tesla in hot water over fatal crashes involving drivers using the full self-driving feature. The company is now the focus of government investigations and civil lawsuits, which allege that full self-driving is impeded by weather conditions such as sun glare, fog, dust and darkness. There have been at least 736 crashes and 17 deaths involving the technology, according to an analysis by the Washington Post.’

Especially given the Elon's insistence that he's a teetotaler, predilection for problematic arm gestures, outspoken support of AfD, frequent reposting of racist Great Replacement memes, and his obsession with populating the earth with his male offspring.

This will be Tesla’s downfall. Elons insistence of removing parts and processes , although is what kept Tesla going past the startup phase, will be the reason Tesla fails in the longer run.

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I've had autopilot and fsd for 5 year, 130k miles. It has not gotten demonstrably better. Matter of fact, it's gotten much worse this year. 1. Tesla ruined cruise control, fsd or nothing. No more single pull on the stalk. 2. Tesla ruined the blinkers. Soft pull and hard pull rely on AI only to stop blinking. Moving over two lanes and turning requires three blinker pulls. On every car I've driven since 1985, a soft pull blinks three times. Hard pull blinks until a full turn. Not anymore. 3. The car drives like a dick whether on chill mode or not. Changes lanes constantly, tailgates, speeds, etc. The whole software stack has fElons attitude. 4. We have rural property. FSD does not work in the country at night. Constantly complains the cameras are "blocked". 5. Does not work in rain. 6. Does not work in fog. 7. Does not understand defensive driving, being careful, being polite, etc. It will NEVER drive itself. We drive with our brains, not our eyes.

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It’s amazing to me that this guy, for all his foolish and goofy behavior, alleged drug use, and small thinking, has become the world’s richest.

Yes and interesting that they didn’t mention rain, which interferes with vision cameras. I read an article that said LiDAR sensors are 12k. Musk is parsimonious so said screw that. Doesnt really car of people crash or die.

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He wanted to cheap out on sensors, a decision that bit him in the ass.

remember when people on this website pretended he was some kind of super genius iron man?

This all came around when there were supply shortages of LIDAR during COVID. So Musk lied and said “we don’t want LIDAR”. None of these Narcibros can ever admit or accept they were wrong. He was wrong.

I read an article ages ago about how lidar had been miniaturized and thought that self driving was finally viable. Only for Tesla to start taking them off their cars some time later. Completely gave up on consideration a Tesla for self driving after that. Need other tech too like the cameras and the AI but thinking lidar was optional was obviously going to kick them in the ass.

Yup. When I lived in a city if it wasn’t raining or snowing, I’d walk or take transit

LiDAR does not have the resolution due to the wavelength. The 12k is a bit misleading. But it is that wavelength that allows it be resilient to poor weather or no light. And it is extremely accurate and fast to identify object distances and makeup. When you combine that with visual, you get a picture of the world that is far more complex than what humans can get with their eyes alone. And that can make up for the lack of intuitive reasoning that computers still lack. With Waymo, they have exceeded human safety in most conditions and situations. Tesla on the other hand only has a good record in the best of driving conditions. Conditions when humans also have a near perfect record. When conditions are not optimal, Tesla has to give control to a human. Sometimes on very short notice. I originally thought FSD was safer but looking at the stats, it is only as good in situations where humans are nearly perfect as well.

What I don't understand is why a hypothetically technology company is against technology which makes its products better The answer seems to be just one idiot though, maybe its fairly simple actually

This is the reason why he funded his now ex friend orange man to win. To use his power in DOGE to oust regulators and quash investigations into his companies: [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/apr/28/elon-musk-doge-conflict-of-interest](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/apr/28/elon-musk-doge-conflict-of-interest)

It allowed them to make some rapid gains... early on. But now that has come to a near standstill. They are only making moderate gains and up against a wall. Possibly someday neural networks and LLM along with much faster computers some day will be able to achieve human level intuitive thinking. But I am also sure by then, LiDAR or similar would be dirt cheap and also in the mix. Likely along with audio and possibly even some kind of 'touch' type of sensors. Because why wouldn't you want senses far about what human are able to perceive?

When your surrounded by people with a lot of money that grew up pre internet it’s easy to use words that make them think you’re smart. That plus all the lead they consumed they genuinely believe Elon. They probably don’t use the products either.

FSD seems to rely on 'follow the car ahead' in many cases. I heard lots say it works better in busier consistent traffic. Humans can do the same thing at times. It is not really a sustainable method for real driving. More so, it reverts control to a human driver on average once every 380 miles. That means it is not sure what to do and you will have to take control, sometimes with short notice, quite often. That negates a lot of the comfort of being driven. Can also result in inattentive drivers. I used lane control and such. Can work for hundreds of miles flawless. But even if it went a few thousand then failed, that is too often. I can not rely on it to be 100 percent. FSD has to go 1/2 million miles between failures and it is nowhere near that yet. It is at 380 miles.

Completely baffling to me that it's legal for this to be called "Full Self Driving", an inherently deceptive name that gives the Elon fans driving these cars or regular consumers who don't understand the limitations of the technology over confidence to rely on it. It is in no way "\~Full\~ Self Driving" and such deceptive and dangerous names shouldn't be legal for products that should require safety oversight on our roads.

I have to wonder how many videos with mistakes do not make it to the public as Tesla only allows fanboys to ride.

The funny part of this is even if it worked as well as Waymo, majority of people still wouldn’t use it. He pissed off 75% of people who live in cities where these would be most valuable. The fact that it won’t receive a wide release is almost irrelevant.

"Full Self Driving" - if I were a personal injury attorney, I would hammer Tesla with this deceptive term.

It's simply never going to work well enough and he can't admit that because every Tesla sold so far has been promised that one day it'll FSD. So every owner will be able to request their money back.

It wasn't "lame", it was a stock scam Lidar is expensive Musk claims he can do self driving w/o it. Stock goes up. He's lying. But stock still goes up So long as he makes sure only small investors and pension plans get stuck with Tesla stock when it collapses he'll be fine.

Yeah too bad that he fired by trump and pretty much burned a lot of bridges for it

Have you guys seen tesla swerve to avoid shadows . That is bonkers

A reminder that the LIDAR-hate started when it was a part of early Cargo Dragon missions but it wasn't configured to not get dazzled by reflections off the space station. Frustration over this continuing issue led him to write off the whole tech. Genius at work.

I would also say that objects help guide fsd. Like if there are cars lining the street and the streets are narrow. In my area there is a long stretch where there 3 big lanes going in each direction. Straight roads with no median. And fsd tended to freak out when there was no traffic.

I think lidars are sensible for autonomous vehicles, but I think this article makes poor arguments against Tesla’s omission of them. 1: The author suggests NHTSA accident and anomaly investigations are evidence they’re tied to lack of lidar. Some of those investigations have been ongoing for years, and have made no such conclusion, or they’d probably have negotiated or ordered corrective action by now. The author is jumping to a conclusion the NHTSA hasn’t reached. 2: The article attributes many of the mistakes seen during the launch, including driving in the wrong lane to make a left, to the lack of lidar. Most of those seem unrelated to that lacking; the mistakes are bad, but similar to the sort of mistakes lidar-equipped Waymos make on occasion. (Admittedly on rarer occasion, per mile). Those are an indictment of Tesla’s software quality, but not lack of lidar. Lidar doesn’t help cars read speed limit signs or interpret road markings any better. 3: The article didn’t cite the one well-publicized mistake that did seem like lidar could have helped avoid: suddenly braking while facing within 1° of the sun a few minutes before it dropped below the horizon. If it panicked due to temporary camera vision impairment, as seems likely, lidar could have reassured it that nothing new appeared in front of the car. Tesla’s current weather and time restrictions help avoid common potential vision problems that one expects would be helped by lidar, and I think they should just add times when the sun is near the horizon to their periods of non-operation. It’s not foolproof, because a car could be going up a hill and have cameras be impaired by a higher sun, but it would reduce the frequency of sun impairment. Ultimately I think Tesla may choose to add lidars or some other additional sensors to robotaxis to expand when and where they can operate safely, but based on last week’s tests, if they’re restricted to clear weather and a high sun, the omission of lidar doesn’t seem to create a significant safety risk.

I only have enhanced autopilot and I’m in the UK, but that’s my experience. It works really well in heavy stop/start traffic on motorways and actually feels like a quality of life improvement. I regularly go through the M5 to M6 interchange which is always busy, autopilot makes it less hassle. Any other manufacturer system would do the same there though. The rest of the time at normal motorway speeds? Doesn’t add anything and as I’m having to focus anyway, well I just as well stay in control. If there’s any kind of weather it craps out and it’s downright terrified of traffic cones. Edit: only other exception is average speed zones, it’s good there but really that’s just for cruise control.

Those are serious problems, but only fog and rain among those you list seem related to lack of lidar. Tesla could add lidar to improve obstacle detection, but still drive like a dick. Maybe lidar would even embolden it to drive like more of a dick! 😂

FSD was so powerful in 2020 and up till 2023. Our theory is some dumb fuck convinced the team to merge China's 'learning' with the US FSD and probably made an argument this will "technically improve things" while it was a horrendous mistake that I don't think they can undo. 2024 was a little weird. 2025 my car swerves in and out of the lane like never before. It's actually impossible to be near semi trucks at times, it's simply no longer safe. I'm convinced they merged the cyber truck FSD with ours as this glaring issue started a few weeks or months after the cyber truck. They don't know what they are doing. They ruined the software over time. I was told it would get better over time and that one day it would drive itself in 2020. I'm looking forward to my lawsuit one day. Either someone will have enough or I will.

The incentives were not specifically aimed at Tesla.

His contrarianism has proved useful in the past, as with SpaceX’s reusable rockets that others didn’t think could be made, and guiding a small EV startup without a traditional dealer network to grab 4% of the US auto market. But this could be a case of success going to one’s head creating overconfidence, or it could just be a basic mistake, which happens when you’re working on cutting edge technology and make decisions that can haunt you years later.

Lidar is expensive, cameras are already in the cars and cheap. Lidar eats into the profit margins, just like good quality control. It's that simple

They'll never catch up to Waymo. By the time they have something working, if it ever happens, Waymo will have already taken a huge share of the market. Also, Waymo cars will be significantly cheaper as they scale the supply chain and improve the car.

Yeah I didnt buy it for my second tesla. Sucks and risk your life to be a beta tester

Didn't the same thing happen to Roomba? They owned the market for robot vacuums. But then they fell behind while the competition adopted Lidar. Hmm...

They can operate in the arctic 24/7 for a couple of .months each year. Too bad its dark for a couple of months during winter.

> Don't listen to the media ...report on the obvious failures of this very limited service that still didn't work. Good thing it never rains in Texas.

the simulation shall respawn failed NPCs as new customers

Exactly my experience with FSD. Could not have said this better.

I'm seeing ridiculous bugs turn up in all sorts of software that worked OK until a year or two ago. YouTube comes to mind for example. One theory I have is that developers have started using Chat GPT to write code.

That’s a pretty good theory.

Doesn’t work in the rain also.

Ego yea

Yea it’s kinda like the more data that was available, the easier it is to understand what’s going on and make good decisions. Seems like a good analogy for the self driving tech with sensors and data availability

Most likely after so many years of floundering and Elon’s bizarre and detrimental interference, Tesla’s best developers have left for competitors. He probably burns them out with horrible work hours as well.

Heck if waymo provides their tech to 3rd parties, I’d buy a car with that ridiculous-looking hat full of sensors just so I could stop having to drive myself around. Just think how much time ppl would save from having their commute time back.

Does make you wonder how much of the previous success was luck rather than brilliance

Lidar *was* expensive. I don't think it is any longer. Heck my robot vacuum cleaner has lidar. and it works damn well. in the dark to boot.

Does it kill pixels in your phone camera? Genuine question not an "erm ackshully", because I assume there are different lidar laser strengths

It scans pretty close to ground level, in a horizontal sweep. I don't think the laser is powerful enough to cause damage.

Nice, thanks

When are Tesla owners going to get their act together and form a class action on this junk?

AI is going to make everything worthless. I had a Reddit comment chat going with an OP who happened to be in another country so the comments happened over several days because of our time difference. I had a theory of why something might be the way it was so I put it in a comment then the next day after they replied back I decided to do a quickly Google Search to see if I could verify if I was right. Instead of Google answering my question with links to documents that contained the key words I was asking about (like it used to do), Google fed me an AI response and absolutely confirmed my theory as true... because there was a Reddit discussion on the very same subject the day before. Yes, I was literally the expert source Google AI was quoting to give me the answer I didn't actually know the answer to. This concept of "give people answers" vs showing them the links where their answers may be located and then prioritizing the newest data and social media is just going to take echo chambers to the next level of stupid.

I don’t think anybody claimed or implied this.

Time traveler. Too many lucky breaks. It's the only theory that makes sense.

Musk was anit-LIDAR 4+ years before Covid. You might be thinking of RADAR or ultrasonics. Teslas use to use RADAR, but they had too many problems (slamming on the brakes, going from 70mph to 40mph, when going under freeway underpasses) so they disabled them/stopped using them. Then during covid they stopped shipping with ultrasonic parking sensors. LIDAR, RADAR or ultrasonics would not have made a difference for the 'wobbly' robotaxi rollout. The 'wobble' was shown on the display -- the Tesla remapping it's path between 'straight to the next light' and 'turn left onto the wrong road' 8-10 times over the course of 1-2 seconds. There was no oncoming traffic so it drove on the wrong side of the road to get to the next light. More sensors wouldn't have made a difference - it got in the left lane too early, not realizing it was a left-turn-only lane an intersection too early.

works in rain and fog OK for me for urban driving or freeway driving, haven't done it on 50+mph rural roads. it use to understand some defensive driving (get over to the side of the freeway lane away from the large semi-trailer truck we are passing) but it stopped doing that in the past few months. Recent versions have a pathological desire to NOT being the left/passing lane on the freeway (even if there is no one behind us and we are slowly coming up on a car in the middle lane to overtake)

Google’s AI overview thing can’t even be called AI, it’s literally just regurgitating things on the net. There is 0 thinking google search wasn’t already doing except you’ve forced an LLM to do it. It is the most useless thing ever made.

Waymo engineers are smarter than Teslas it seems.

> I originally thought FSD was safer but looking at the stats, it is only as good in situations where humans are nearly perfect as well. The bigger issue with the statistics Tesla publishes is that they all involve human supervision. If you want to compare humans vs humans with driver assistance that’s fine, but these data tell us nothing about the performance of a theoretical unsupervised version of FSD against human drivers.

Worst thing about it is it states the things it regurgitates as facts. I'm generally only searching when there is likely to be confusion, with several people making statements online that are incorrect. The other day I wanted to check something, it came back certain that a popular misconception was the truth. When I checked where it had got it from it was just a random post on mumsnet. Chat GPT is even worse as it often makes things up completely. It'll even give fake references for the things it has made up. For example I can type in "Write an essay about \[my full name\] son of \[my father's full name\]" and, because he happens to share his name with that of a famous right wing lunatic, despite that lunatic not having a son sharing my name, it writes an essay about 'me' that is complete fiction, often involving my having committed heinous crimes! E.g. in one such fictional biography I had spent many years in prison after walking into a church and gunning a whole load of black congregants down with a machine gun. If you then ask it for references it provides links that look credible, starting with urls for real news organisations, but when you click on them of course they are all 'that page may have moved' and the like, all plausible because the links are to old stories!

There’s a reason why so many manufacturers are willing to ship some flavor of traffic jam assist before they’d even think about offering unfettered autonomy. Following traffic is practically trivial compared to real “self-driving”.

Or they are using GTA as a training model…

Alien?

From eating lead paint?

I do not think it is the worst logic to speak of. It makes some sense to go into a 'follow the traffic ahead' mode. Hell I think we do it as humans to some degree. But it can also hide a lot of short coming in the feature. And when life safety is on the line, that is not acceptable. I really really want some self driving car but it has to be nearly 100% flawless above that of humans in all conditions. We will get there but I am certain it will be with more than just visual.

He should have started offering his service in Yukon. Half of the year he’d do fine.

Yes that more or less feeds off my post to be sure. FSD simply makes humans drive in the conditions where about 95% of accidents occur. It is pretty easy to claim a safe driving stat if you are on a strait well defined highway. If that was the only time humans drove, we likely would go 10 million miles between accidents.

>The company is now the focus of government investigations And people wonder why Elon might want to help a certain someone win... And "might" have been willing to "break the law" to do it.

Would work great on the planet from pitch black

Yes yes and yes. Didn’t work out so well for the egocentric egomaniac did it

Trump will throw Musk under a bus…..rightfully so. And then we should destroy MAGA

My favorite are the lawyers who present case law examples before a court/judge only for it to come out ChatGPT made them up. Problem is we're grafting this "thinking" ability onto everything without regards to how it actually performs so that users can shut off their critical thinking abilities and just be spoonfed answers.

I was about to comment that my fancy version of a Civic could do that if I'd opted for the automatic transmission.

“LiDAR is lame…and slamming on the brakes for tree shadows & hitting first responder vehicles is cool.” \-Space Karen

Markets can remain irrational longer than you can stay sober. Or some such saying.

Well do you see any investigations?

I'm not sure the tech is ready for consumer usage as they're still at level 4.

That's not where I thought you were going after "small."

More from the fumes from leaded gasoline. But you can absorb lead through your skin, so if you touch a wall that was covered lead paint there's a chance it'll get into your system (forever) that way. There's also dust etc. from objects bumping against walls and scraping off a very thin layer of that lead paint.

Yes, in fact. https://apnews.com/article/tesla-investigation-safety-autonomous-death-a158e4dee7b5e94b148ec3bb5c47233d#:~:text=The%20new%20investigation%20follows%20another,2016%20through%202024%20model%20years.

I have had nearly the exact opposite experience as you when using FSD on a new juniper model Y. I guess the extra camera and better hardware make a huge difference

But it’s ok to eat, right? How about those kids that vaped with illicit vapes and have the permanent lungs of a 70 year old.

I like it

There were some huge ones coming down the pike. https://www.epi.org/blog/corruption-in-plain-sight-how-elon-musk-has-benefited-from-the-first-100-days-of-the-trump-administration/#:~:text=While%20the%20details%20of%20the,forward%20with%20shutting%20down%20USAID. Note that Elon Musk has been instrumental in shutting down USAID. investigations into Tesla crashes? Psssh it'll be a fine. Remember when he said he might be in jail if Kamala wins?

I keep telling the guys at FSD sub exactly that: any new car sold in Europe is by definition L2 certified. It has to be, by law. So the cheapest Dacia will perform just as good in most cases as Tesla. The situation is a bit different in the US where all of the assistance aids are not (yet) mandatory, but once they are? A big chunk of Tesla's revenue and "prestige" will be gone.

I don't understand what you're trying to say? No, obviously it's not okay to eat lead, either. And those kids who vaped with illicit vapes are now out there supporting Elon and Trump in wide numbers, so maybe it's happened to them, too. But I doubt it's had any real effect, compared to the amount that lead affected Gen X. See this chart: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/117h6n5/generation_lead_by_the_why_axis/

12k wavelength??

I am not saying anything specifically just responding to you and adding some comments that are irrelevant.

I think they meant resolution. I do not know what 12k wavelength would mean. That being said, I should have said frequency. Wavelength is a bit misleading in LiDAR. Normally they are inversely related but not in respect to LiDAR. LiDAR sends out laser pulses within a certain frequency. The Frequency it is pulsing is what limits the overall resolution as it needs to wait for a response between each pulse. As the pulse travels out at the speed of light, it does not have to wait long but when you are doing 100,000 in your forward view, they add up. Also the length you wait for a response is exactly equal to the 'distance' it is seeing. Theoretically you could see 20 miles out (fighter aircraft do), but the farther you shoot out, the lower your resolution. Is all related. You could have millimeter resolution with low latency a meter out but obviously that is not useful in a vehicle. I am not sure how far they set LiDAR but I suspect in a city it is about a block. As speeds increase, they may adjust it to see 1/2 mile ahead or more. All the same, the resolution is a tradeoff with the distance you want to view. All things being equal that is. Combined with visual, you get a lot more accurate information. They also employ multiple LiDAR systems to gain higher accuracy in certain directions. You do not need to know what is happening behind you with the same accuracy for what is happening in front of you.

Funny how ‘lame’ is not a scientific basis for decision-making. Nor is ‘cringe’

Musk made a big gamble back when they introduced the Model S that improvements in computer vision techniques would occur much more rapidly and ultimately remove the need for something like LIDAR. He had no real basis to do so other than the fact that cameras were cheaper and less obtrusive than the spinning LIDAR sensors that were being deployed at the time. Since then he's been flat out spreading lies about every technology other than vision. First it was that LIDAR wasn't necessary. Then it was the constantly perpetuated myth that HD maps somehow didn't scale. Later it was that sensor fusion was something that was incredibly difficult to pull off and therefore having radar and ultrasonics brought more problems than advantages. Lately he's just been pushing this idea that Waymo's vehicles are super expensive and Tesla is going to win out because he's promising the robotaxi will only cost $25k and be able to undercut them. Musk has no idea what he's talking about 99% of the time and just misuses technical jargon to sound smart to retail investors, financial analysts and members of the press who lack the technical background to realize it. By far the most amazing thing is that after all this time his statements have any credibility at all and that he still gets that same kind of attention as actual experts in the field. None of the people parroting his talking points could even begin to justify them but they'll nonetheless confidently repeat them as they're the word of God himself and absolute truth of the universe.

did anyone learn why the safety drivers are in the passenger seat? in my mind elon was told he had to put human drivers in the cars and he was stubborn about it, so he put them on the wrong side so they aren’t actually able to help in an emergency

>There have been at least 736 crashes and 17 deaths involving the technology, according to an analysis by the Washington Post. How many times do we have to go over this? Autopilot =/= FSD.

Lidar works...

Ah, you mean PRF.

>Lidar is far more expensive, costing roughly $12,000 per vehicle, as compared with cameras, which come in at around $400 per car, according to Bloomberg. The cheapest car with Lidar is the Leap Motor B10 which starts at $15,200 in China. Planned price for Europe is below 30,000 euros.

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lol. Ya you are likely correct. Bit of a tangent I went on but maybe a few people learned something.

Ha! I appreciated your humor. Maybe it doesn’t translate to English humo(u)r. Speaking of lead, did you know that one of the big lead/gas companies back in the day had an exhaust vent problem and lead fumes were circulated back into the factory for an extended period? Affected workers became drooling imbeciles. Some died. When they were finally sued by the workers’ families, the company lawyers argued in court that it wasn’t lead that drove them to this tragic state, but perhaps it was that they loved their jobs so much they went crazy. That’s a true story*. . . So I’d invite anyone who thinks there should be fewer safety & environmental regulations on corporations to keep their opinions to themselves. *Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything”

Honestly years ago, I thought he was pretty cool. He made PayPal and sold it, then went to make an electric car factory with beautiful and well designed electric cars. Followed by a rocket company that was gonna get people to Mars! I love sci-fi and I do think humans need to expand into space. And then I found out that he became rich from Paypal because they fired him. He didn't create Tesla but did a hostile takeover. And I learned the difficulty of getting and being on Mars with him just handwaving the difficulty away. There's tons of negative about the guy but his marketing used to be pretty to notch

What are the odds his aversion to LIDAR is just an ego thing? Like he mentioned his distaste for LIDAR to somebody once and they called him out on it? It makes no sense given what we know

I'd like to subscribe to your newsletter.

He can probably get Big Balls to wreck whichever department is being nosy to Tesla

It is not about the resolution of the LiDAR. Elon is angry at Lidar sensor suppliers that they are selling him these sensors not at a huge discount. He thinks Lidar in general is too expensive. This wasn't the case when he could sell his cars at a good profit margin but then Chinese entered the picture and everything changed. In addition, he believes investing in AI + vision will help his other companies as well, like Optimus robot and SpaceX.

Well guess what. He didn’t make PayPal either! I thought Tesla was cool until I worked there. Then that led me to do some digging on Elon and I found out he’s never done anything but buy and sell other companies.

He could save money big time by replacing expensive rocket fuel by good old fossil diesel in his space-x program. If he insists on having his spaceships explode in midair or on the ground like he seems to do, I recommend adding a good portion of ammonium nitrates to the mix.

I think it’s a different issue fundamentally. Even if we had supervised FSD data with the factors you mentioned controlled or accounted for, it would still tell us nothing about how safe FSD itself is versus human drivers, because the system relies on a human driver.

Much about Tesla doesn’t make sense. Musk has said (paraphrasing), “The biggest mistake an engineer can make is optimizing a system that shouldn’t exist”. It’d seem he’s applying some form of that logic here. Then you look at something like the door handles on Teslas and scratch your head.

Classic Elon

It helps to have parents who made large amount of money from mines

I think my favourite test drive video was the woman that had her ride cancelled because rain was coming in. Then the car dropped her and her dad in the middle of some random park with no shelter.

It only gets dark like half a day every day, so we good.

I couldn’t have said it better, your comment is spot on and should be upvoted to the top. I noticed the exact same behaviour since recently.

Oh, it can be called AI all right, if you make the abbreviation stand for Artificial Incompetence.

I'm with you, had FSD since 2018 and is is definitely going backwards especially in the releases in the last 2 years. I notice it getting into turning lanes MUCH more than it used to but was supposed to go straight. It doesn't freak out like it used to when lanes go from 1-2 or 2-3 but a few times it couldn't decide and car was shake a little until I forced a decision by turning the well. Don't try to drive at dusk into the sun car with FSD, it almost always screeches at me to take the wheel immediately. These days on long drives my wife asks me when I get home "How many times did Tesla try to kill you?"

There were other issues, not just the abortive lane switching. Like speeding, dropping off passengers in the middle of an intersection, and others. These would have been avoided if the system had a proper model of its surroundings. Only Lidar/Radar would solve Tesla's piss-poor navigation system. Elmo fanboys are the absolute worst...

Gartmans Number 1 rule: Markets can remain irrational for longer than you can remain solvent.

He is a complete and utter fool. A selfish and reckless person, not unlike the orange potus. Musk is proud when it explodes. Thinks it’s a joke. ‘Rapid unexpected disassembly’. Doesn’t make those jokes tho when people die in his cars

Yes, world’s richest man. Parsimonious. I saw a video the other day that said vision only self driving would only be appropriate for the least expensive cars, which I assume to mean ‘outside the USA’

Yeah. Nice nickname huh

Same same. Related. Same underlying tech. Different misleading names.

The software running them is completely different.

Ok. Same reckless indifference for safety. Tesla ranked 6 of 10 by a European safety or in self driving. Not good.

It’s classic Musk: a pronouncement about engineering that sounds smart to non-engineers, while making no sense whatsoever to anyone with the slightest bit of training.

i don’t know if thats true lol it just seems the most likely reason to me. otherwise why have a safety driver sit in the passenger seat where they can’t take over the wheel

Apparently the guy meant 12k dollars. lol. But I left it up if anyone learns something. General information.

Agreed. While we likely could compare humans in the best conditions to FSD that only drives in those conditions, not sure there are any stats on human drivers when accidents occur exactly. More so, as you say, Tesla relies on a human driver to begin. Even in good conditions, if it does not know what to do, it reverts to the driver. You can not take that out of the equation to do a comparison. What we can say with certainty is that FSD is not nearly as good as a quick glance suggests and could be many factors worse.

Question: In New England, when do you get clear weather and a high sun? Answer; Maybe once a year if you happen to be on a highway. For the tree-lined roads I drive, that would be never.

Next price point will be 88

Before the stock market overvalued his companies like he had the midas touch he was able to throw his family's emerald wealth at buying his way into companies and paying for the best and brightest to solve the problems that make the technology businesses viable. Reusable rockets were ultimately a business decision routed in modern manufacturing practices. The rockets used by NASA being largely research focused are wholly improved per launch. The problem with tesla is they're all about cost cutting, the first products were made, investors were enticed to overvalue the company, now actually manufacturing the cars isn't gaining them any value so they try and cut corners and costs everywhere, its why tesla are known to have a poor safety culture since safety costs money. LiDaR is expensive compared to cameras, so they went the way of the dodo. It means now that Teslas can't do FSD but that doesn't matter because the investors are speculating on the promise of FSD. It's always just around the corner to keep wall street lemmings marching because it fails as soon as it has to interact with the real world.

Musks hubris and arrogance will cost thousands of lives

I think more sensors is the only thing that's going to push the concept forward for now. People don't care if the taxi looks "goofy" with loads of extra sensors on it... It's taxi lol. It's like saying the train I ride to work needs to LOOK sexy for me to take it. lmao

Over 700 crashes and 17 deaths.... Damn. Tell me again FSD doesn't need LiDAR?

A grounded take. Refreshing to see among the bots that are simping for Tesla around here.

My guess? A big LiDAR roof mounted module (like Waymo) made Teslas look "ugly", plus extra cost, so they opted to go the camera only route. *Form over function*, and now it's gonna bite them in the ass. LiDAR is superior, in rain, fog and glare. Full stop.

I'm with you. Function *over* form. Give me *real* FSD with the LiDAR sombrero, idgaf.

Wooooow. I'm just realizing the massive irony here. Musk is behaving like Thomas Edison with DC, Waymo is acting like Nikola Tesla with AC. Waymo's LiDAR is superior, but Musk has a vested interest in discrediting it, *just like* Edison did to Tesla decades ago.

Yes, irresponsible and reckless he is chasing an outcome that will never happen

It's almost like maybe you're wrong about him or something...

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This is nonsense. What model year is your Tesla? I'm typing this reply as my 2021 Model S drives me to my friend's house at night, in the rain. The only times that autopilot has ever cut out in the rain or when it was raining so hard that I had trouble seeing as well.