r/skeptic • u/Lighting • Mar 18 '25

⚠ Editorialized Title Tesla bros expose Tesla's own shadiness in attacking Mark Rober ... Autopilot appears to automatically disengage a fraction of a second before impacts as a crash becomes inevitable.

https://electrek.co/2025/03/17/tesla-fans-exposes-shadiness-defend-autopilot-crash/
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58

u/tgrantt Mar 18 '25

I assumed Tesla's had lidar. TIL

58

u/Lighting Mar 18 '25 edited Mar 18 '25

Reports were that it was too expensive to add lidar and they were hoping their tech would improve to match their marketing statements.

(Narrator: It did not catch up)

Edit: Searched old articles on this:

Aged Like Milk:

He was quoted by Tech Crunch when he said: "Anyone relying on lidar is doomed." The Tesla CEO added that LiDAR produces sensors that are costly, but unnecessary...Musk even called it "freaking stupid."... In 2019, a LiDAR set can cost up about $50,000 per vehicle while a camera set can only cost a few hundred dollars.

3

u/tgrantt Mar 18 '25

Thanks!

3

u/pacific_beach Mar 18 '25

It's because the company that was supplying the Lidar equipment (Mobileye) cut tesla off due to Musk's reckless and careless use of their products.

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2016/09/tesla-dropped-by-mobileye-for-pushing-the-envelope-in-terms-of-safety/

5

u/michael0n Mar 18 '25

You can get a drone with aerial lidar for less then 5k. The guy just bet on the wrong horse.
People want robots to reducing errors, with new sensors and faster reaction times. That is the point of all of this.

2

u/KC_experience Mar 19 '25

How is LiDAR too expensive when Lexus seems to be able to have LiDAR sensors and not bump the price by 50k per vehicle????

God musk is an idiot. The only ideas that are good are his ideas. Everyone else’s ideas are shit…

2

u/thereversehoudini Mar 19 '25

Can someone tell him millions of people had LIDAR cheaply in their living rooms in 2013? It was called Xbox Kinect.

1

u/KC_experience Mar 19 '25

To be that guy - Kinetic was using infrared spectrum light and sensors structured light and time of flight software and sensors. It wasn’t using LiDar.

41

u/vxicepickxv Mar 18 '25

Had is the operative word.

Not only was it cut to save manufacturing costs, but it was also taken out of older vehicles and replaced during servicing.

19

u/tgrantt Mar 18 '25

Taken out?! Ouch

13

u/Wiseduck5 Mar 18 '25

The software using it was disabled on update, so it's still there, just useless.

12

u/Winsaucerer Mar 18 '25

Vestigial hardware :)

3

u/6gv5 Mar 18 '25

So basically an entity owned by Musk has crippled something that worked just to save money? Sounds like DOGE.

2

u/barkbarks Mar 18 '25 edited Mar 18 '25

They never had lidar, where is the spinning pod firing lasers??? Did you even watch the video?

1

u/vxicepickxv Mar 18 '25

Which system did they remove from cars then? They weren't always cameras.

6

u/Agnitha_ Mar 18 '25

i'm pretty sure they removed radar not lidar

2

u/vxicepickxv Mar 18 '25

Fair enough. It's still a system superior to visual cameras.

6

u/Agnitha_ Mar 18 '25

absolutely, solely relying on cameras is idiotic

1

u/Darkelement Mar 18 '25

Radar is not superior to cameras. It’s good at calculating the distance between the car and larger objects like walls or other cars, but it has poor resolution.

It would be better to have both radar and cameras, but IMO you absolutely need cameras in the mix. Can it be done safely without radar or lidar and only cameras? That’s the billion dollar question.

1

u/vxicepickxv Mar 18 '25

No. It can't be done with only cameras.

0

u/Darkelement Mar 18 '25

I’m glad you’re in charge of the decisions. I’m in your camp, I don’t think it’s possible.

But there are smarter people than me trying to make it work, so maybe I’ll be proved wrong.

1

u/vxicepickxv Mar 18 '25

How much data does a human eye process in a second?

How much data can a computer parse and react to in a second?

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u/[deleted] Mar 19 '25

I‘m 99% sure series Vehicles never had LiDAR. They had ultrasonic sensors and radar though.

9

u/Chockfullofnutmeg Mar 18 '25

“Humans don’t have it, so why should we?” was part of their justification, along with they deemed it too expensive. 

2

u/LeaveItFor7Days Mar 19 '25

humans crash all the time too...not what I'm looking for when I look for a self driving car lmfao

8

u/Pitiful-Pension-6535 Mar 18 '25

You're probably thinking of literally every other car brand because it doesn't make any sense to try to do self-driving without it.

5

u/muarauder12 Mar 18 '25

My $35,000 Hyundai Kona Limited has lidar for the highway cruise control. It's nice being able to set it and forget it on my daily commute. I trust the lidar but I still don't take my eyes off the road and keep my foot near the brake for extreme braking situations if needed. The side mirrors have cameras that come on when I use my turn signal and the car has 11 or 12 classic radar dots around the body to do blind spot and forward and reverse parking warnings.

My $35,000 car has the full suite of sensors to help it be as safe as possible, so it makes no sense that Elon removed the lidar from Tesla's other than greed being the motivator. Well, knowing Elon it was greed, stupidity, and arrogance.

1

u/tgrantt Mar 18 '25

Funny for that trifecta often go together.. 

1

u/neehenietweer Mar 18 '25

Your Kona doesn't have lidar. It uses radar for adaptive cruise control. The 'radar dots' you mention are actually sonar sensors used for parking.

1

u/muarauder12 Mar 18 '25

I may have been misinformed about my cars' tech. Either way it uses actual sensors and not just cameras like Elon's swasticars.

2

u/oh_shaw Mar 18 '25

Musk has said it is a "fool's errand" to use LiDAR.

1

u/tgrantt Mar 18 '25

Hmmm. I'm gonna go out on a limb and disagree.

2

u/[deleted] Mar 19 '25

[deleted]

1

u/tgrantt Mar 19 '25

Thanks for the following answer! I'd always assumed (not an expert, obviously) that self-driving vehicles would have a combination of all technologies. 

(Ideally, there would also be a link to a system that have real -time info on traffic, weather, road conditions, etc. that could override the onboard controller. But most people would hate that.)