[simonh]

I don't see how you get to accuse one of the most knowledgeable experts in the field, who's dedicated a career to building autonomous vehicles, of... not wanting fully autonomous vehicles. Wanting things isn't always a good measure of our ability to actually obtain them.

[EForEndeavour]

He (pkhamre) didn't say that John Krafcik (Waymo CEO) "not wanting fully autonomous vehicles" at all. He is criticizing the practice of confidently predicting the forever (im)possibility of something based on a projection of current technologies decades into the future.

Krafcik's a world leader in the field of autonomous cars, so we have good reason to weight his opinions more heavily than those of random HN users. On the other hand, his "may never change" verdict on sensor tech is vague to the point of uselessness. Whatever happens, he will have had a point.

[xiphias2]

At the same time Waymo put a lot of money into working with lidars, which helps Waymo to get to Level 4 faster, which is great, but it seems like on long term Elon is right that to get to L5 autonomous cars have to improve enough to be able to work only with cameras and microphone. John may not want to say this.

[simonh]

Any estimation based on probability can always claim to be right, after all a 1% chance can still happen, but sometimes all we can truthfully do is give an estimated likelihood. Maybe that's genuinely the best he can say, in which case I'd rather hear that than a definite pronouncement.