[leesec]

Yes I would agree Waymo owns the narrative and a lot of it is based on their disengagement stats. I wouldn't say those tell the whole story.

They are also completely different approaches, i.e. Waymo using LIDAR and Tesla relying on cameras as the primary sensor.

But the major question is can LIDAR _ever_ be financially feasible, and if so can it become feasible faster than camera gets good enough at vision. Right now the sensors on the Waymo van probably cost more than the van itself.

That's either a very expensive purchase for the consumer or a very large amount of cap-ex Waymo would have to put up for a fleet of self-driving taxis.

And if it turns out cameras were the right choice, or visa versa, that means the opposite company would have spent a LOT of their R&D funding on the wrong tech, and would be way behind.

[reitzensteinm]

Waymo quotes $7500 per car for the LIDAR unit, which is financially feasible today for consumer vehicles, even if it only supplied level 3. It's trivial for a level 4 robotaxi. But only once the software works.

Even discounting aesthetics, Tesla couldn't have bolted it on to every car sold in the hope that it'll work in a few years time. They'd be bankrupt by now. They were forced to use cameras if they wanted any intermediate progress.

I get that there's a lot of misinformation about Tesla and you're trying to correct it. Even as a Tesla bear I acknowledge that.

But don't do it by creating further misinformation about competitors. You're just adding to the noise.

[leesec]

That's just one LIDAR, count how many are on their vans. (I think 5)

[reitzensteinm]

It's for the main one. The others are much cheaper. The total price is not 5x$7500.

These are not levels where it makes sense to question if it will "ever" be financially viable. It's less than the premium people paid gladly for a Model S.

A true level 3 on consumer cars would sell like hotcakes.