Elon Musk Called LiDAR Lame as Tesla Robotaxis Lag Behind Waymo & Volkswagen

He's such a manchild. How can someone like that get so successful, I just don't get it. He's pathetic

VW is the perfect partner for Waymo. Ford will be working with them soon. All legacy auto makers may beat Tesla to fsd

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Elon demonstrating, yet again, that he has no domain knowledge.

He was lucky, had the connections, and had access to the capital, to get into areas that were largely untouched. Internet banking adjacent services. Buying Tesla and being the figurehead as it proved the interest in 200+ mile EVs were viable someone just invested in a charging network when most car companies were settling for 50-70 miles. Using his wealth and willingness to push the limits of regulation and safety with both Tesla autopilot and Space X. Things NASA and most government space agencies couldn’t do. Current Tesla and Twitter show how much he flops around when he tries to act in an established arena with competition.

If it isn't readily apparent from the current state of the political climate here in the states...this is what happens when you let internet trolls run things. We are completely disconnected from reality, and everything is a meme.

The goal set by republicans and billionaires like musk and bezos is to eventually privatize everything where they have complete control over how much to charge for every service. We are headed for a future where you buy a car and have to pay 24.99 a month to drive it.

What an absolute imbecile.

He took massive risks at the right time that paid off (plus a good amount of fraud that never sticks to him). There's another, better timeline where Musk lying about autonomy didn't save Tesla and they went bankrupt around the Model 3 launch. And he couldn't use leveraged TSLA to prop up his other house of cards and he's a distant memory.

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There is nothing to investors, any pr is good ;) stock up again.

As an early adopter, Tesla made technology and system architecture selections with the most mature technologies available at the time. It would be an expensive and a multiyear program to change the concept. Early adopters hardly ever win, unless they are able to make their design to become the „dominant design“.

BYD also just announced level 4 parking.

Tesla had lidar, then removed it from their vehicles.

Buses are socialism or some shit

I always sigh when I read Space-X and remember how long it took me to realise its probably done on purpose because "Space-Sex". Such a child.

Sounds S3XY

“I can pay programmers to work on existing camera images for way [mooooooore] cheaper!”

It's funny and remarkable that a human teenager (with their still forming brains) can figure out how to drive with a handful of hours of practice and instruction using their senses, but Tesla isn't quite there with billions of miles of training data using cameras.  I think *maybe* the analogy doesn't hold up.

I'd be totally ok with subscribing to a self-driving car service. Our cars just sit parked probably 95% of the time, there's not really any reason to *have* to actually own one. Being able to summon a car when needed and not having to worry about gas, insurance, or maintenance would be awesome. You could pay for a tier of car, like basic or luxury or whatever, and I wouldn't even mind ride sharing. It'd relieve a lot of congestion on the road and end up cheaper for everybody. Of course, they'll fuck it up completely.

That's what gamepass ultimate and Netflix premium cost now.

Complaining about a technology like you are reviewing a restaurant, while you are in the business of developing technology, is a classic freeloader reaction. Dude doesn’t invent nor improve anything. I remember Steve Jobs when he was asked if flash was going to be added to iOS, and he said fuck to the no, since the new, at that time, html5 was doing similar things. He was asked about the omission of a technology, and he provided an alternative. He could have said flash is a drag on web browsers and also unsafe, which was true. Instead offered a free alternative that didn’t require plugins or signing up for Adobe.

Tesla removed LiDAR because of cost and time to develop only. Having two systems resulted in a vehicle driving far more 'cautious' and that ruined the experience early on. If either system indicated a situation, the vehicle would need to react. So in Musk fashion, he just dropped it. That allowed him to get a system to market faster and show rapid development. But with FSD, you need near a 100 percent record. Tesla is at 99%. That means for every 100 drives, 1 will be sketchy. (And this is in good weather). 99% means two potential accidents a year. You need to get to 99.999%. He needs to move the decimal over 3 places. And with visual only, that does not seem to be possible. At least not in this century. I suspect the final self driving car will have visual, LiDAR and likely audio. It may even have some time of touch and smell type of technology someday.

I don't understand how having LiDAR and a crap more data points on what's actually infront of you is "LAME"

Steve Jobs also blocked making larger iPhones, because he didn't think they were useful. After he passed away, Apple started making larger phones and those became top sellers. Having one person control design decisions can be risky.

'system works in Hamburg' is really a good thing for acceptance in Europe

It's not so much that Tesla is 'lagging' as that Tesla has a fake product that doesn't work and Waymo has a real product that does.

right. And a thing to be noted is that, we think that success = smart. But the current way things are setup, thats far from reality. The reality is money = success. Meaning, if you have money, you can multiply it much easily with minimal efforts. Elon has his skills. Selecting interesting projects. But with early success and early money, he could take a chance on a number of projects. An ordinary, actually smart person cant do that. The other skill he has is marketing. Barring past 4-5 years, he has been great at marketing. Sending the car to space, manipulating media, selling FSD, mars all that bs. Beyond that he is not 'smart'. The current system make rich ppl richer, and hope you ll also get rich, FOMO etc has driven this. Look at Elizabeth holmes, the Wework fella, the [Builder.ai](http://Builder.ai) thing. Ppl just want to gamble wherever there s money. And Tesla at least has some good cars and hell of a marketing. So ppl have piled on retirement funds there. Dont be smart. Just be rich, duh

the same reason why US does not have train system.

Theres 2 halves to this Like sure, waymo has an extremely advanced product. But... is it viable? The lidar arrays put the cost well into 6 figures. There may not ever be a business case to support it over human drivers. Meanwhile tesla is perhaps being more pragmatic about what could produce a sustainable cost structure, but has not made it functional... Neither one works right now. See if waymo can reduce their costs faster than tesla can figure out the camera limits.

I'd say acceleration. Something that tells I stear/accelerate to go this direction, but in the end I go that direction.

> The lidar arrays put the cost well into 6 figures. LIDAR costs continue to come down. BYD is claiming their HW setup is only ~$2800. >There may not ever be a business case to support it over human drivers. If the sensors have a long enough life span, sure there is. Even if the sensors are $100k and a driver is only costing the company ~$30k/year (all in, which is ridiculously low for a full time employee, considering insurance, etc,etc,etc), it's still just a 3 year ROI for the equipment against the salary of a driver. Regardless, no one is going to make billions of $ in profit selling taxis - autonomous or not.

This!! Robotaxis don't eliminate congestion. Busses and mass transit do. And it's affordable.

He’s still harping on this shit?

Ask your local government. They're the ones responsible for the bus service.

Is this 2025 or 2015? Trick question, he's still wrong and repeating the same tired bullshit from a decade ago

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Uber's heading that way with its upcoming [Route Share.](https://www.uber.com/blog/route-share/) It's not autonomous yet but that'll come. Honestly though, I can't but feel like these companies can't win. They either get yelled at for building taxis, or they get yelled at for "reinventing the bus". Regardless, Self-driving mass transit is out there and being built. [Cambridge](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg8p5v3rm5o) has a self-driving bus route for example. Where I live, they're making all our subway lines self-driving. Mass transit is largely a public service, so you usually need to wait for the local government to issue a contract. Waymo can't just roll into a city with a fleet of buses and decide: We're the city's buses now!

Unfortunately, both of their top tiers are $25.

Your arguments may apply to east-west coast passenger rail system. But you cant argue that for LA-SF. That is a slam dunk. I can even argue for san diego-seattle, and one on east coast maybe new york area to atlanta. They re already making one from LA vegas i believe.  And ppl will drive to the stations! They drive to airports all the time!

Waymo busses ftw

$2,800 after heavy government subsidy...

If the stock was rationally based on autonomous driving and not fraud, then the moment Waymo and his other competitors started leaving them in the dust....the stock price should have plummeted. Since it's still higher than all their competitors and car manufacturers combined... it tells me something is very wrong. And now they have lost Trumps backing and the EV credits etc and sales have almost hit rock bottom...and the CEO is doing nazi salutes and supporting far right parties.... the stock SHOULD have fallen to reflect these factors. The bubble WILL bust at some point.. unless some entity is keeping it artificially high.

You have obviously never driven a Tesla. 99% my ass. I have done the FSD trial on my Tesla. It's more like per 1 hour driven, one incident will be sketchy where it cuts someone off or breaks a rule. It's roughly as reliable as letting my 12 year old drive. It's slightly better than GTA police vehicles.

If a human had the visual acuity of a Tesla they would qualify for a labrador

You realize that 99% is extremely bad? That could be two chances of death per year. A 12yo likely would be a better driver than that. This is the problem because statistics suggest that and people without thinking do not realize that is extremely bad. And Tesla knows that. And more so, this is based on idea weather. The difference between 99% and 99.999 percent is a couple times a year to once in a lifetime.

And you realize that my point was that I think it's even worse than that? I made the FSD trial. There is just no way the FSD the Model 3 is able to do can make a full trip from one end of a bigger city to the other end without an accident.

They never had lidar, but Elon told that stupid lie that every car built after 2018 would be capable of having FSD. The early cards aren't even compatible with hardware three or four. They do not have the harnesses necessary for upgrades all they can do is take things away.. Elon royally screwed them...

Honestly it can quite often. Depends on some factors and road types. But 'quite often' is not nearly good enough. And while initially you can make some pretty quick gains, now to make it near 100%, you are looking at a factor of work each time to move the decimal place over one. I really want some automated system but the reality is that they are a long way away from doing so. Asking pretty much any Tesla driver if they would put their infant in the car alone and send them somewhere, and the answer is absolutely not. Even if it was legal.

Yep. More so, the hardware right now is not intuitive enough to act with near human levels. Quit far off. I bet in another 5 years we will be hearing from the same people that have bought into it today suggesting they have not got their promised system yet.

Their first gen sensors were made by Mobileye but Musk fucked that up.

Wild how this article leaves out Los Angeles entirely. Waymo’s been active here for like almost a year now and they’re immensely popular.