[ljlolel]

In order to make vision-only depth sensing work well, you need ground-truth data. Buying a few thousand lidar to get a ton of ground-truth training data for the NN to learn distance on its own from vision is an obvious move. They're not switching to Lidar.

source: i debugged lidar and built localization and behavioral planning algorithms for self driving cars

[stefan_]

Yes, 10 years after the initial announcement, Tesla has just now got around to ordering some LIDARs for capturing ground-truth training data. They then went out of their way to get the one LIDAR made to look palatable to end customers instead of the superior industrial ones everyone puts 8 of on their recording cars.

Not very credible.

[stetrain]

> Tesla has just now got around to

What's the source that they haven't ordered from Luminar previously? They have definitely used Lidar test rigs for years.

[zamadatix]

See sibling comment, this wouldn't be a first time occurance.

[ben1040]

And they've been doing this for several years already, with Luminar hardware mounted on engineering vehicles with manufacturer plates.

https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/tesla-model-y-luminar-lid...

[darby_eight]

Why would they not simply use lidar in the cars themselves?

Besides, I imagine many of the issues with vision (e.g. adverse weather) could not be addressed with training-time data.

[ripjaygn]

> Besides, I imagine many of the issues with vision (e.g. adverse weather)

LIDAR is bad in rain, fog and snow.

[meepmorp]

So are cameras.

[etrautmann]

And people

[stetrain]

Because $1000 of Lidar hardware per car would be $1.85 billion per year.

[Zigurd]

If you make millions of them per year, lidar won't cost $1k per car. OTOH existing lidar designs are not designed for mass market manufacturing or serviceability.

[fmobus]

Take out of his 56B comp package

[stetrain]

Those are stock grants which don’t directly affect the company’s net income.

[adrr]

They do affect net income when they vest. It is treated as an expense in GAAP.

[choilive]

If you had multiple cameras for stereoscopic vision. Couldn't you figure out the depth data vision only without lidar? I'm sure there was a good reason Tesla didn't go with a stereoscopic camera system (at least front facing) from the get-go.. they already have 3 cameras up there with 3 FOVs. Could add another camera there in a stereo setup for depth data.

[rootusrootus]

Isn't human stereoscopic vision only good for something like 20 feet or so? The cameras behind the rearview mirror are even closer together than that.