alt Hacker NewsKarpathy provided additional context on the removal of LiDAR during his Lex Fridman Podcast appearance. This article condenses what he said:
And here's one of Elon's mentions (he also has talked about it quite a bit in various spots).
https://xcancel.com/elonmusk/status/1959831831668228450?s=20
Edit: My personal view is that LiDAR and other sensors are extremely useful, but I worked on aircraft, not cars.
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The points linked repeatedly focus on cost and complexity as justification, even explicitly stating musks desire to minimise components in Kaparthy’s list.
They don’t focus on safety or effectiveness except to say that vision should be ‘sufficient’. Which is damning with faint praise imho.
If that link was to try and argue that the removal of sensors makes perfect sense i have to point out that anyone that reads that would likely have their negative viewpoint hardened. It was done to reduce cost (back when the sensors were 1000’s) and out of a ridiculous desire by Musk for minimalism. It’s the same desire that removed the indicator stalk i might add.
Based on that list it boils down to 2 things it seems:
- cost (no longer a problem)
- too much code needed and it bloats the data pipelines. Does anyone have any actual evidence of this being the case? Like yes, code would be needed, but why is that innately a bad thing? Bloated data pipelines feels like another hand-wave when I think if you do it right it’s fine. As proven by Waymo.
Really curious if any Tesla engineers feel like this is still the best way forward or if it’s just a matter of having to listen to the big guy musk.
I’ve always felt that relying on vision only would be a detriment because even humans with good vision get into circumstances where they get hurt because of temporary vision hindrances. Think heavy snow, heavy rain, heavy fog, even just when you crest a hill at a certain time of day and the sun flashes you