As far as I know, no car manufacturer ships cars equipped with LIDAR. Nor do they seem to have a camera setup as extensive as Tesla. So I fail to see how Tesla has painted itself into a corner. The worst case is, that they are not reaching full autonomy with the current hardware setup. It certainly would be a big marketing blunder if they don't, but if necessary they can add LIDAR to the production, if they choose to.
> As far as I know, no car manufacturer ships cars equipped with LIDAR.
I can confirm that, at least in a sense, this is false. There are plenty of series cars with LIDARS, but not he scaning things you are thinking about, but simpler kind of lidar tech[1]. I know that is not what you were talking about, but I thought it's worth pointing out other, existing, alternative approaches.
I think Tesla not waiting for Lidars to get cheaper is the right decision. They can always integrate Lidar once they cheaper in the new models. Right now, no production car ships with a scanning Lidar that I know of.
Waymo cars are really expensive because of that and they cant scale because Velodyne can't make Lidars that quickly.
You also consider the fact that Lidars are literally beams of light being emitted and reflections measured. If you have every car with a Lidar, you get interference and its not the gold standard of measurement anymore.
Tesla conquering the problem with algorithms is the right approach. Remember our brains use algorithms and two cameras to drive too. So its technically possible.
Nvidia keeps on pumping out faster GPU's, cameras keep on getting better. Teslas getting more and more data. They just need better algos while they wait for cheaper sensors that scale.
That's a very wise business move while everyone else waits for a magic bullet.
> If you have every car with a Lidar, you get interference and its not the gold standard of measurement anymore.
I had people working on these things that told me that interference is not an issue. Take this with a grain of salt but I would love to see some technical analysis about the possible impact of interference before dismissing LIDAR as susceptible to interference and the impact the interfecene it makes relative to the inference of positioning and spatial estimation.
I've found this: http://sci-hub.io/10.1109/ivs.2015.7225724 but it seems that while interference exist, from what I'm reading from the paper, they are not critical in the sense that they can't be worked around.
And if that is so, if you believe LIDAR is going to dominate the field, it's even more critical working with LIDAR early on so you have the know-how to fix the issues that might arise.
Shipping hardware that isn't needed is not how automotive engineering works today.
Most automotive projects look like: You want to release a new car model in year X (with is typically around now() + 3-5 years). Then you start a development project exactly for that car, which involves creating roadmaps for the car, creating the architecture, sourcing the components, packaging everything together and testing everything. Most components (including infotainment systems, driver assistance systems, etc). are contracted to sub-suppliers, which develop them especially for that car model (or maybe a range of models from one OEM). At the end of the development cycle you have a car which has exactly one car which has (hopefully) everything that was planned for that model and which will get sold. In parallel the development cycle for the next model begins, where there might be only a minimal reuse from the last one. E.g. it might be decided that one critical driver assistance component is sourced from another supplier, is now working completely different, and requires also changes for the remaining components.
So if you do not intend to upgrade something or reuse it, it just doesn't make sense to include additional hardware for it. We will see the required hardware in cars which also will make use of their functionality.
For Tesla it will be quite interesting if they will really deliver huge autonomous functions on that hardware, or whether we will see a new generation Model S (with overhauled hardware) before anyway. I'm personally pretty sure that we will see new model generations before the software will be on a "fully autonomous" level.
They may have painted themselves into a corner by saying the current hardware is sufficient for "full self-driving capabilities." The worst case is they're putting half-baked solutions on the road.
Yeah. Theoretically the claim is true (at least wrt. the sensors, not sure about computing power onboard). Tesla's hardware is already better than human hardware for this task.
The trick is, they'd have to advance the state of the art in software quite far, to derive "full self-driving capabilities" from this hardware.
Chevrolet Bolt self driving test fleet comes this way. The difference is that Tesla has been talking loudly to get people to not see the short comings other companies are actively compensating for.
so what if they can add it to future production, their talk promises or implies they have all they need. yet cursory review of random youtube videos will show you how limited their system still is.
this may be another "war" they lead the charge on but falter in securing the win. you can play the car marketing game at times similar to the technology market but in the area of safety there is no compromise. instead of acting like a tech company pushing a new tablet they should have acted like SpaceX
They're probably right, since it's been reported that Google's Waymo has achieved just that - press reports from January say $8,000 per sensor which is positively affordable when compared to $75,000 for a competing sensor.
I think most people think LIDAR is going to eventually be inexpensive -- even Tesla has a few test cars with LIDAR. However, it's a fair weather sensor, so you'll have to do a lot more for level 5.
> no car manufacturer ships cars equipped with LIDAR
For love of the god, please do not comment in the public if you do not understand the subject. Take a look at Chrysler + waymo minivans, Volvo + Uber suvs, Mercedes self-driving test cars. They all have lidars.
Sorry, but you did not get the point op was making. None of those you mentioned are production cars like the Tesla, they are test mules. The point of op is correct, he/she is not talking about modded research cars.
But no other company is selling the promise of an autopilot car. For example, Audi is expected to launch renewed Audi A8 this year with Level 3 autonomous driving but it's called "Traffic Jam Pilot". Level 2 was called "Traffic Jam Assist".
