wow, getting downvoted for stating this fact. I can't believe the anti-Musk bias here on HN. You would think HN would actually appreciate one of the more innovative entrepreneurs on the planet.
I think it might be due to a form of jealousy. Sad to see HN so unenthusiastic about a guy who is probably the most amazing entrepreneur of our time.
It's not that he hasn't invited a little bit of controversy (eg. comments about the diver, covid, etc.) but I think those are inconsequential when it comes to HN's attitude toward him.
What are you all talking about, the original top-level post has a reasonably presented assessment of Tesla’s strategy and the ramifications of such a strategy. Sure, that assessment might be flawed, but I don’t see how any of that is “anti-Musk bias” or “jealousy”.
The comment regarding humans not needing LiDAR misses the point, which is that either every other self-driving car group is incorrectly deploying an expensive hardware solution or there are valid technical reasons why that might be a better path to L5. Tesla trying to overcome the limitations other companies are deploying LiDAR for is a technical risk they are taking on, and, as the top level post noted, might not be the worst bet given the downside which is that they’ll just have to license the tech.
The comment regarding humans not needing LiDAR misses the point, which is that either every other self-driving car group is incorrectly deploying an expensive hardware solution or there are valid technical reasons why that might be a better path to L5.
Implementing L5 without Lidar must be possible. Humans are absolute proof of that. That's not to say Lidar isn't useful, or cost effective given the complexity of the problem, or even just a really good idea that will make autonomous cars better drivers than people. It might be all of those things.
All my comment says is that Lidar is not a requirement for driving, and we have a very obvious proof of that.
Anyone saying that Lidar is necessary for driving is ignoring the hundreds of millions of examples of driving with just a pair of 2d cameras and a highly specialised organic supercomputer.
EDIT: The point another poster made about weather and bright sunshine is a reasonable one - humans can't drive when they can't see either, so Lidar would potentially make an autonomous car better at driving than people. That would be an example of how Lidar is useful, but still not necessary.
Humans also have a organic supercomputer in their brain. Variety of sensors is probably the best approach. I've grown up and seen technology prices on all sorts of weird technology fall (3d printers, sensors, midi controllers). At some point, we will basically give up on perfection on LIDAR and just do cheap multi-LIDAR arrays where the error rate is overcome by just having multiple units.
One could also argue that humans are not proof of anything, as humans frequently make mistakes and conduct dangerous maneuvers whilst driving. There are many road accidents occurring right now, today, around the world, as a result of humans being insufficient drivers.
We can say that something better than human-level driving ought to be possible without LIDAR, though; take the perception of a human (cameras) and replace the brain with a computer that can make better calculations much faster than a human can.
> every other self-driving car group is incorrectly deploying an expensive hardware solution
Given that Tesla are the only company to have put something approaching autonomy into the hands of customers, that does seem to be the case.
What happens next in this thread? Someone points out that Tesla's solution is still far from perfect and claims that they're being highly irresponsible by having shipped it. Then I'd ask how many accidents have happened as a result of FSD beta having shipped to some customers already and they assert that Tesla isn't transparent with the data so we don't know. I'd point out that if we don't know of a single Tesla FSD accident so far, it can't be that irresponsible to have put it in the hands of a few customers and that it's been rapidly improving in the weeks since. It's the same thread, repeated over and over on here, Reddit, etc.
Tesla was the company that made electric vehicles successful. To your point about groups taking different approaches, I think Musk & Tesla do take approaches that will differ from others, and succeed partly because of their approach being better in some important way. I think they had a bit of an unfair advantage when it came to autonomy. They needed hardware that could be shipped on vehicles as soon as possible, which meant that it needed to be cost efficient & energy efficient. LIDAR's energy efficiency doesn't get talked about much, and I don't mean just the LIDAR itself but also the subsequent processing power required to make sense of the resulting point cloud. Each Waymo vehicle is an expensive tech demo. It's a very good tech demo, but over the years it's become evident that they're very hesitant to scale it up right now. I'm sure they'll eventually get there, but they are not a company focused on getting this done ASAP. Tesla are getting autonomy done with urgency.
It does not scale because Elon Musk said so? That HD mapping doesn't scale is the biggest trope in autonomous driving that I see Tesla fans repeating everywhere. Google, for example, has large scale mapping experience and their street view cars have been carrying Lidar sensors for years now. They've already mapped a bunch of cities in the US.
Tesla itself uses HD maps for things like intersections, traffic lights and so on. It's just not at the level of detail others use it for.
They’re rolling out a revolutionary new technology that people aren’t used to or don’t trust yet. Phoenix provides that easy testing ground in terms of good roads and great weather year round. Last thing Waymo wants is to tackle too many things at once and cause a disaster. Remember how a single death effectively ended Uber’s self driving efforts?
They’re also offering a commercial service. Which means figuring out operations, customer service, emergency protocols, working with local administration and so on. They’ve said a larger goal in Phoenix is to figure out how to perform and scale operations. The local regulations there are much more favorable. Until recently, Phoenix was one of the only (probably only) places where you could operate a robotaxi program and charge for it. California just recently approved it, so SF is where they’ll likely go next as they are already setting up everything there.
Ultimately, mapping is the not the constraint for them to go to new places. It’s the operations and regulations that they need to figure out every time.
They've been running Waymo One in Phoenix for more than 2 years already, and driving in Phoenix for about 5 years. It just seems to be taking a bit more time than I would expect, but I suppose it could be that they're trying to get it to the point where it can be extremely efficient to scale.
The achievement of the Tesla as an electric car are inspiring and incredible.
The issue people take is the reckless approach to selling nonexistent or immature tech that by its nature puts human life at risk. It is possible to both respect and disagree.
I kind of agree. It may be a weird kind of jealousy, though no one here would admit it or even recognize it for what it is.
The arguments used against Tesla are in fact legitimate if we’re talking about a regular company. But Musk has proven to do the “impossible” multiple times and has been right on so many levels, so at this point you have to question whether he’s catastrophically wrong about this, or perhaps the others are about lidar.
Either way, the confidence that Tesla is wrong is way too high in my opinion.
It's the Musk pattern. For every single company he's started, people are always 100% confident it won't work, and also (somehow) a bit offended that he's trying.
On the other hand, there's a bit of an obsession to equate the success of a company with the respect the founder is supposed to receive. There's plenty of examples of people who became 'successful' and were still not great humans. Larry Ellison and the last president come to mind. Steve Jobs comes to mind.
People need to stop fantasizing about 'Elon' being some great guy because they like what he achieved. It's almost like the technorati need their own version of celebrities to fawn over.
Musk's immature and petulant behaviour is an embarrassment to entrepreneurs.
I for one am not remotely jealous of him but disappointed that others think his behaviour should be emulated or worshipped just because he has been successful.
I am disappointed that people remove humanity from people who are successful. We all make mistakes and any prominent figure that doesn't is presenting a facade.
I'd rather see someones imperfections and know where I stand than have another generational #metoo
Common, the rest of us are not getting nearly that level of benefit of doubt. The behavior that gets excused for successful or rich people is regularly punished in normal or unsuccessful people.
I think that such level of benefit of doubt is irrational and disproportionate. It prevents people to talk and think rationally/objectively about what was said and done, because they twist logic into pretzels just to make it all feel good.
Can I be unenthusiastic about a billionaire who reopened his factory in the middle of a pandemic, where the rate of injuries of his factories is one of the highest of the entire country, where the turnover is ridiculously high because of how he squeezes everything out of young engineers, where he tests out """self driving""" on public roads where you or I could be working? Or maybe I could be unenthusiastic about the strike breaking, the utter disrespect he has for people who criticise his PR attempts, going as far as to call them pedophiles?
Or maybe unenthusiastic about the fact that all he has is a vision, but has never built anything by himself. When you get kicked out because _Peter Thiel_ is more tolerable than you, that says a tiny bit about his character.
It's not "a little controversy". It's being a sack of shit of a human being.
Elon musk is everything wrong with the tech industry as a whole, overpriced, over engineered, and QA lacking products, hes arrogant when he shouldnt be, and his "disruptions" are mostly stupid, what accomplishments he does have are largely the result of engineers he pays that he takes credit for
Sorry, you are clueless. Yes, some aspects of his personality are obnoxious, but he’s built multiple companies that have delivered real innovation, his customers are largely happy, and I’m sure his engineers don’t care how much credit he takes.
His companies have few innovations, at best they are iterative, and often actively worse. and he did none of it himself, he deserves zero credit
people think he is innovative because he sold decades old tech to people who didnt pay attention before, because he is a glorified marketing exec and hes not even good at that
consumer satisfaction is a poor way to measure quality
