Ford CEO Jim Farley says Waymo’s approach to self-driving makes more sense than Tesla’s

I am guessing this is Farley’s admission that Autonomous driving is years if not decades away from becoming reality. Farley has some really smart people who actually hold advanced degree’s in engineering advising him and he is a person who actually listens to this advise, unlike the current Cult leader of Tesla, Teslas Board, and what appears to be a vast majority of TSLA shareholders and the paid shills such as Dan Ives.

Robotaxi doesn’t work or it works as well as a remote control car. If it actually did, Elon would have started with a thousand cars, heck 100 cars.

Fords blue cruise makes more sense than tesla's FSD. I trust them and Waymo much more than anything tesla.

The thing that Tesla has never been made to explain (say, by a would-be, imaginary regulator) is how Tesla apparently finds significant value in utilizing Lidar to do so-called "ground truth" testing in development vehicles... but that the same unique and definable physical benefits of a Lidar (and/or Radar) sensor do not somehow provide \*\*even more\*\* value in a production system where the risk costs are enormous. Fundamentally, that is how I read Farley's statement and I would bet, perhaps in not so many words, that Ford engineers have expressed this exact sentiment to Farley. Unexplained, open-ended inconsistencies are \*\*very\*\* problematic in the context of safety-critical systems - and a robust, good faith internal safety-critical system development process is very sensitive in allowing such inconsistencies to go unaddressed (because it probably means that their is a hole in the safety process).

A tesla is more expensive to maintain if you need to hire a person to watch over it. You could just hire them as a driver and save money lol

So he's saying it makes waymo sense?

Sigh. Take my upvote, dammit.

Waymo's lidar is expensive. Huawei's self-driving uses three lidars that cost $250 each.

Like a taxi? Cool idea.

Why is the cost of the actual vehicle being used as a driverless taxi of so much concern? When I think of taxis my mind automatically thinks of NYC; where: >Last year, medallion sales ranged from $325,000 to $750,000.

What? The guys doing sensor fusion for a decade think sensor fusion is the right approach..?!

Nah. Using LIDAR for ground truth in training makes for a supervised depth detection problem. That’s coherent. They are just not good enough at it. The thing Tesla is trying to do is put FSD in all vehicles. Can’t do that with expensive LIDAR. But they can’t solve the computer vision problems either so - womp. Tesla tried to run before they walked and they predictably fell on their face. Could have pulled a rabbit from a hat - but they failed.

It's not years away though. Waymo is doing it right now, and has been for a while. What he's saying is vision only is too limited despite the price advantage to be good enough for what Ford demands of itself. He's also saying that the development, volume of data, software, etc etc is difficult and risky - they decided it makes more sense to offload the risk and pay a company that pulled it off.

Given Tesla's implied design intent with FSD-equipped vehicles... And given the risk costs of that design intent... Those risk costs will easily eclipse any unit Lidar costs. Easily. (Especially given that this is a novel safety-critical system.) Risk costs may be "invisible", but they are VERY real. The ongoing "cost of the sensors" argument that has occurred over the years was always super odd ball to me because sensor unit costs are virtually insignificant - even at, say, Lidar unit costs from a decade ago. The other elephant in the room on this is that Tesla can say, do or hand-wave anything because they have always entirely shifted off their risk costs on other humans and the public. Tesla is \*\*still\*\* doing it with human operators in their so-called "Robotaxis" with a finger on the kill switch.

Yeah that nails it. I realize on rereading your initial comment I should have gone “yes and”

That was my thought: Why is LIDAR so expensive? You can get a laser rangefinder for golf, archery or rifle shooting for a hundred bucks, although I'm sure those kinda suck. If FSD is SO important to have, it should be worth $1000 in hardware not to kill pedestrians, et al, on a frequent basis.

All well and good. I just wish Ford's own approach to EVs was entirely better. Warmed over VW left overs ain't doing it Jim. Still, at least you got time for your own podcast.

Of course licensing is the smart move. But he is saying that it is likely far away - in terms of cars that Ford will make and consumers will be able to buy. Of course WayMo and others are there or nearly there already - but likely that will be a model where we all pay for rides as opposed to owning cars. That's fine...in fact, it's better in many or most cases of urban regions (most people actually live in or near cities). In a sense he IS saying Ford is not likely to be making any fully autonomous vehicles for a decade....because first a system to be licensed has to exist. Then Ford has to partner. Then it has to design, build an test vehicles. Also, it is not in Fords interest to build autonomous Taxis. They want sell metal by the ton and Taxis are too efficient for them.....

Y'all should short Tesla

Given that Elmo often charges over 10K for his non-working system, I think we all will be fine with 3K retail extra for the working Lidar parts of the system.

Right - like every drone ever made and all advanced aircraft and so on...who would have thought that redundancy might be needed for the MOST DANGEROUS THING we all do every day. Elmo not only isn't smart - he's ignorant.

Because Radar.

You mean just making wild and unlikely claimes in investor calls year after year isn't the way to perfect a complex technology? Elon is going to be soooo disappointed.

That's a spectacularly useless article. Waymo is working now and Tesla is nowhere close, of course Waymo's approach is better.

Hmmmm I also happen to see lots of Waymos out there, have never seen an autonomous Tesla. Perhaps because Tesla just can’t really do it?

Probably why it works.

Did he say it makes waymo sense?

I think Ford wants L5 before investing or signing an agreement. I don’t think anyone is close to it, yet. L4 requires premapped geofenced areas which can change and needs continuous updating. L4 is really not autonomous driving if the area needs to mapped continuously, is it?

There are people who still argue that self driving needs lidar and radar. Well, this recent video lays this argument to rest, but of course, fans will be fans. https://youtu.be/IQJL3htsDyQ?si=bFBm8mg0OizV8kjo

It makes Waymo sense to me

Tesla is toast. Ford and other auto companies know better. Tesla does it cheaper and less safe!

And Tesla will be the odd man out.

Waymo sense than robotaxi

no no, it's a state of the art self driving future taxi with operator back up. Completely different concept.

A concept of a future concept?

> Why is LIDAR so expensive? You can get a laser rangefinder for golf, archery or rifle shooting for a hundred bucks, although I'm sure those kinda suck. You can certainly buy cheap lidars like on robot vacuums but automotive lidar needs much greater distance and resolution. High performance lidar as a whole is still low volume, R&D heavy. Costs will continue to drop.

This is a claim you can only make if you have 2 eyes and an IQ above 40.

Well it *is* run by a very, very odd man.

It is, because mapping and driving are two distinct activities. The mapping is an input to the driving, which is autonomous. If the mapping is not maintained, the driving is still autonomous, but it's also dangerous.

Lidar. I only know it from reading how robot vacuums use it.

What if... Just hear me out... Have like... A taxi... But like... *really* big? A taxi that can carry like 30 or more passengers? it could drive in a set pattern with predefined "stopping points". People could get on or off at the "stopping points" that suit them. I reckon this could disrupt big transport

Now Tesla should use the best possible lidar technology and integrate Luminar lidar into its robotaxis. This would address all criticisms of technologies not being used to ensure safety, and Tesla's robotaxis would be more widely accepted by society. An experiment with only cameras was once upon a time. Now Elon should realize that an additional investment in lidar will add massive value for his company in the future. If Elon refuses to continue to keep only camera-based robotaxis on the streets, the robotaxi idea will fail, or rather, will only be allowed to be used with restrictions and in a limited way. Which is probably not in Elon's best interest. Conclusion: Call Luminar for the use of Halo lidar. You'll get back many times over the few million spent on this. Believe me, admitting strategic mistakes shows strength and trust in a company that accepts the obvious criticisms of industry experts and is willing to correct these wrong decisions.

I wonder if an app-based self-driving van/minibus swarm might be better than predefined stopping points as a new type of transit, instead of defined bus routes and stops. You enter your destination, a van picks you up wherever you are, maybe the computer asks you to get out and switch vans at some point once or twice when it crosses paths with another van going more toward your destination. You wouldn't know the route, but you wouldn't care if it got you there quicker and more directly than taking two bus routes that don't have a stop within a few blocks of starting and ending points. Seems like we could be close to this being practical. Probably not gonna happen.

That's kind of the [vision of Weride](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGkM_xWDO8I&t=1s), a company Nvidia invested in.

I think for any car one can buy, autonomous driving is years away. It takes a lot of technology, this is from Volvo's level 3 system: "The Ride Pilot system will include as many as five radar sensors, eight cameras, 16 ultrasonic sensors, and a lidar unit to gather real-time information of the vehicle's surroundings and send all this data back to the self-driving "brain."" [https://www.jdpower.com/cars/shopping-guides/what-is-volvo-ride-pilot](https://www.jdpower.com/cars/shopping-guides/what-is-volvo-ride-pilot)

I imagine they'll eventually get lidar and ultrasonic cheap enough to provide real distance data over top of the camera based computer vision. The Volvo method you linked is clearly very redundant, probably because they don't know which will be best in the long-term and their brand prioritizes safety.

I agree they should but Elon won’t.

One onboard operator an multiple remotes, probably yelling at each other about constant problems more than the typical cabbie talking on his cell phone. A nightmare that no one asked for.

Elon grew up being driven around in a rolls Royce or some shit so he has no idea what this strange tech is

When all these lidar units are on the road companies are going to need to put some specific filters in their dash cam cameras and phones.

Maybe he means cars that normal people buy