I work with programs approaching L3+ from L2, with the requirement that the system works for 99% of roads (not tesla before people start fixating on that).
We find that the cases where lidar really helps are in gathering training data, parking, and if focused enough some long distance precision.
None of these have been instrumental in a final product; personally I suspect that many of the cars including lidar use it for data collection and edge cases more than as part of the driving perception model.
Sort of; accidents are the absolute core of the product. They are rare, but they are the focus of the design.
By edge cases I mean scenarios like the lights going out in an underground garage; low vision due to colourful smoke or dust, or things like optical illusions or occlusion that a human would just need to remember.
Lidar can help, but not really enough to be worth it.
Urban operating domain combined with legacy approaches.
If I was designing a robotaxi 10 years ago I would use lidar, designing consumer vehicles for near future L3 it's no longer the best use of resources. I prefer more compute and cameras for the money.
Our current issues are now scene understanding and navigation; followed by parking. We get very little value from LIDAR in the driving cases, so much so that we don't even use it for active nav even on cars that have it. Only for training and parking.
Waymo is the best current autonomous driving system and Waymo uses LIDAR. This is because LIDAR is an incredibly effective sensor for accurate range data. Vision and Radar range data is much less accurate and reliable.
Waymo used LIDAR in the realtime control loop. It combines LiDAR, camera, and radar data in real time to build a 3D representation of the environment, which is constantly updated.
I fundamentally don't trust any level 4 system that doesn't use LIDAR
Yes, I am aware of waymo... What they do is impressive. However they don't have a product that works for all highways yet, that's the space I work in, and we have no real fixation on lidar... It's nice but not a requirement, and hard to justify the cost unless you can make sales because of it (and there are some places where this is the case, but not everywhere)
You don't need the mm precision of lidar very often; we find that it offers nothing at speed over radar; and in tight manoeuvres the cameras we need for human park assist and ultrasonics do well enough.
It in not more accurate; but it is more precise, but that doesn't really matter. (Radar gives you relative speed directly, this is more important than a very precise point at highway speeds).
Waymo is level 4. I think currently it is nearly impossible to make a level 4 system as safe as Waymo without Lidar. Maybe new 4d imaging radar or THz radar could change this. Sensor modalities have physics-based limitations, current camera+radar isn't sufficient for L4.
Like Waymo? (https://dmnews.co.uk/waymo-robotaxi-spotted-unable-to-cross-...) 17 years after betting the farm on LIDAR the solution fails to navigate a puddle. Sorry but they bet on the wrong technology, Tesla has overtaken them with multi camera and NN solution.
Your conclusion from a single incident is a bad inference. One vehicle getting confused by a puddle (likely a sensor fusion edge case or mapping artifact, not a fundamental LIDAR failure) doesn't indict the technology. Tesla's cameras have produces vastly more failures.
Waymo has driven tens of millions of autonomous miles with a serious injury/fatality rate dramatically lower than human drivers. The actual data shows the technology works. Tesla FSD still requires active driver supervision and is not legally or technically a robotaxi system. Comparing them as if they're at parity is wrong.
LIDAR gives direct metric depth with no inference required. Camera-only systems must infer depth from 2D images using neural networks, which introduces failure modes LIDAR doesn't have. Radar is very valuable when LIDAR and cameras give ambiguous data.
What metrics has Telsa overtaken Waymo? Deployed robotaxi revenue miles? No. Disengagement rates? No published comparable data. Safety per mile in driverless operation? No.
A Tesla wouldn't stop for a puddle. Also its not locked to a small geofenced area (people have driven coast to coast without a single intervention on FSD including parking spot to parking spot) when I can buy a Waymo vehicle that does this then Waymo would have caught up with Tesla.
Your puddle example is utterly irrelevant. Tesla's are notorious for phantom breaking. Robotaxis are very much locked to tiny geofenced areas. Some even shaped like a penis because Musk is such a child.
"people have driven coast to coast without a single intervention on FSD including parking spot to parking spot"
I find this claim very dubious. Prove it. Teslas never drive empty for a very good reason.
Err they have lots of Model Ys in Austin as Robotaxis right now with no drivers. I guess this is also 'dubious'. Look it's clear you have a huge bias I would urge you to read up on https://grokipedia.com/page/List_of_fallacies otherwise your emotional responses will blind you to reality.
"hey have lots of Model Ys in Austin as Robotaxis right now with no drivers"
They do not. They have a very small number of them open to a select number of people, not the general public. And they are limited to even smaller areas. You need to understand that Musk is NOT an engineer, he is more of a con man desperate to inflate tesla stock price. If he says self driving cars don't need LIDAR then they must actually need it.
Who should I believe a random poster on hackernews who has likely an average salary or Elon Musk who is the richest man in the world and create multiple trillion dollar companies......hard one!
Whats wrong with grokipedia its a bit less woke/far left wing, more balanced.
You are just mindlessly regurgitating the lies of Musk and using an "appeal to wealth" to justify not analyzing them. He has been lying about self driving since 2016.
For nearly a decade Elon Musk has claimed Teslas can truly drive themselves. They can’t. Now California regulators, a Miami jury and a new class action suit are calling him on it.
I work with programs approaching L3+ from L2, with the requirement that the system works for 99% of roads (not tesla before people start fixating on that).
We find that the cases where lidar really helps are in gathering training data, parking, and if focused enough some long distance precision.
None of these have been instrumental in a final product; personally I suspect that many of the cars including lidar use it for data collection and edge cases more than as part of the driving perception model.
Accidents are not normal driving situations but edge cases.
Sort of; accidents are the absolute core of the product. They are rare, but they are the focus of the design.
By edge cases I mean scenarios like the lights going out in an underground garage; low vision due to colourful smoke or dust, or things like optical illusions or occlusion that a human would just need to remember.
Lidar can help, but not really enough to be worth it.
Lidar is by far the most accurate source of range data. You need to explain why Waymo and Zoox use lidar in direct contradiction to what you claim.
Urban operating domain combined with legacy approaches.
If I was designing a robotaxi 10 years ago I would use lidar, designing consumer vehicles for near future L3 it's no longer the best use of resources. I prefer more compute and cameras for the money.
Our current issues are now scene understanding and navigation; followed by parking. We get very little value from LIDAR in the driving cases, so much so that we don't even use it for active nav even on cars that have it. Only for training and parking.
Waymo is the best current autonomous driving system and Waymo uses LIDAR. This is because LIDAR is an incredibly effective sensor for accurate range data. Vision and Radar range data is much less accurate and reliable.
Waymo used LIDAR in the realtime control loop. It combines LiDAR, camera, and radar data in real time to build a 3D representation of the environment, which is constantly updated.
I fundamentally don't trust any level 4 system that doesn't use LIDAR
Yes, I am aware of waymo... What they do is impressive. However they don't have a product that works for all highways yet, that's the space I work in, and we have no real fixation on lidar... It's nice but not a requirement, and hard to justify the cost unless you can make sales because of it (and there are some places where this is the case, but not everywhere)
You don't need the mm precision of lidar very often; we find that it offers nothing at speed over radar; and in tight manoeuvres the cameras we need for human park assist and ultrasonics do well enough.
It in not more accurate; but it is more precise, but that doesn't really matter. (Radar gives you relative speed directly, this is more important than a very precise point at highway speeds).
Waymo is level 4. I think currently it is nearly impossible to make a level 4 system as safe as Waymo without Lidar. Maybe new 4d imaging radar or THz radar could change this. Sensor modalities have physics-based limitations, current camera+radar isn't sufficient for L4.
Like Waymo? (https://dmnews.co.uk/waymo-robotaxi-spotted-unable-to-cross-...) 17 years after betting the farm on LIDAR the solution fails to navigate a puddle. Sorry but they bet on the wrong technology, Tesla has overtaken them with multi camera and NN solution.
> Tesla has overtaken them with multi camera and NN solution.
Let me guess, you heard this from Elon?
Your conclusion from a single incident is a bad inference. One vehicle getting confused by a puddle (likely a sensor fusion edge case or mapping artifact, not a fundamental LIDAR failure) doesn't indict the technology. Tesla's cameras have produces vastly more failures.
Waymo has driven tens of millions of autonomous miles with a serious injury/fatality rate dramatically lower than human drivers. The actual data shows the technology works. Tesla FSD still requires active driver supervision and is not legally or technically a robotaxi system. Comparing them as if they're at parity is wrong.
LIDAR gives direct metric depth with no inference required. Camera-only systems must infer depth from 2D images using neural networks, which introduces failure modes LIDAR doesn't have. Radar is very valuable when LIDAR and cameras give ambiguous data.
What metrics has Telsa overtaken Waymo? Deployed robotaxi revenue miles? No. Disengagement rates? No published comparable data. Safety per mile in driverless operation? No.
A Tesla wouldn't stop for a puddle. Also its not locked to a small geofenced area (people have driven coast to coast without a single intervention on FSD including parking spot to parking spot) when I can buy a Waymo vehicle that does this then Waymo would have caught up with Tesla.
Wow, so it can cope with driving on the highway. That's the easy part.
Your puddle example is utterly irrelevant. Tesla's are notorious for phantom breaking. Robotaxis are very much locked to tiny geofenced areas. Some even shaped like a penis because Musk is such a child.
"people have driven coast to coast without a single intervention on FSD including parking spot to parking spot"
I find this claim very dubious. Prove it. Teslas never drive empty for a very good reason.
Err they have lots of Model Ys in Austin as Robotaxis right now with no drivers. I guess this is also 'dubious'. Look it's clear you have a huge bias I would urge you to read up on https://grokipedia.com/page/List_of_fallacies otherwise your emotional responses will blind you to reality.
> Look it's clear you have a huge bias I would urge you to read up on https://grokipedia.com/page/List_of_fallacies otherwise your emotional responses will blind you to reality.
Writing this and linking to fake Wikipedia is actually hilarious.
"hey have lots of Model Ys in Austin as Robotaxis right now with no drivers"
They do not. They have a very small number of them open to a select number of people, not the general public. And they are limited to even smaller areas. You need to understand that Musk is NOT an engineer, he is more of a con man desperate to inflate tesla stock price. If he says self driving cars don't need LIDAR then they must actually need it.
https://futurism.com/future-society/polymarket-fortune-betti...
Polymarket user David Bensoussan has made $36,000 by betting against Musk's wildly optimistic self driving predictions.
linking to grokipedia feels like intentional rage-baiting.
Who should I believe a random poster on hackernews who has likely an average salary or Elon Musk who is the richest man in the world and create multiple trillion dollar companies......hard one!
Whats wrong with grokipedia its a bit less woke/far left wing, more balanced.
You are just mindlessly regurgitating the lies of Musk and using an "appeal to wealth" to justify not analyzing them. He has been lying about self driving since 2016.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2025/08/20/elon-mus...
https://futurism.com/leaked-elon-musk-self-driving
For nearly a decade Elon Musk has claimed Teslas can truly drive themselves. They can’t. Now California regulators, a Miami jury and a new class action suit are calling him on it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_predictions_for_autono...