[asdkhadsj]

It does make me sad that Tesla didn't just throw all the (affordable?) tech they could into their cars, and then figure it out later.

Eg, it seems like they are taking the "figure it out later" approach, but they limited what they can work with to just camera information. Which to me is a shame. I'd like to see Tesla's model with lots of inputs.

Then again, I don't ship these cars, so I'm probably being ignorant :)

[MrOwen]

To be fair, it seems like there's been a lot of innovation and miniaturization in the LIDAR space in the past year or two. Even if Tesla wanted to preemptively install LIDAR for future proofing, I'm guessing that addition to the car would be an eye sore.

[Animats]

There are lots of LIDAR startups. And there's Continental, the big European auto parts maker. They bought Advanced Scientific Concepts, which has a good but expensive flash LIDAR. (I saw the prototype on an optical bench 15 years ago.) They showed a prototype on a car in 2017.[1]

There are about 100 companies involved with automotive LIDAR.[2] Making LIDAR units cheaper looks within reach. Arguments are over which technology of several that work will be cheapest. Not whether it can be done. There are the rotating machinery guys. The flash LIDAR guys, divided into the "we can make CMOS do it" and "we can get InGaAs fabbed at reasonable cost" camps. There are the MEMS mirror people. All have working demo units.

But no car maker is prepared to order in quantity. Continental is an auto parts maker - when some auto manufacturer wants to order a few hundred thousand units, they'll crank up a production line and get the price down. There's no demand yet beyond the prototype level. The startups mostly want to get bought out by someone who can manufacture in volume. In the end, it's an auto part.

Once the units get cheaper, they can be better integrated into cars. The top 2cm or so of the windshield can be dedicated to sensors. Additional sensors near the headlights, looking sideways from the fenders, and backwards will complete the circle. The top-mounted rotating thing is a temporary measure until the price comes down.

[1] https://www.continental-automotive.com/en-gl/Landing-Pages/C...

[2] http://www.automotivelidar.com/

[m463]

> Tesla didn't just throw all the (affordable?) tech they could into their cars

But they did. Since the late 2016 model S, each tesla comes with 1 radar unit, 8 cameras, 12 ultrasonic sensors and a replacable computer system.

At the start, these were not all used, but they have been used for more functions over time.

The model X got the same cameras, and my friend who has one said his car uses the side cameras to prevent the self-opening driver and passenger doors from dinging nearby cars.

They've designed a new faster computer (Hardware 3.0). The folks who paid for full self driving will get one of these swapped in when full self driving features require it.