7 ms·
Tesla bought over $2M worth of Lidar from Luminar
- pchristensen 2y ago$2M doesn't seem like a lot for a company the size of Tesla. Sounds like R&D.
- ckdarby 2y agoVery confused to why they're not just acquiring. If they're representing 10% of revenue are they're doing a pilot and then considering outright buying them?
- sushid 2y ago100% revenue != valuation of company if that's what you're implying.
- unglaublich 2y agoData collections for model training.
- darby_eight 2y agoWhy would they not simply use lidar in the cars themselves?
- meepmorp 2y agoCost cutting.
- lenerdenator 2y agoHow much Lidar does $2 million buy you? Probably, what, a year's worth of Tesla's manufacturing output?
- grecy 2y agoNot even remotely close. This is clearly R&D just to validate the images from their vision approach.
- cozzyd 2y agoenough for one engineer's test bench, more like
- stetrain 2y agoThey produced 1.85 million vehicles in 2023. So a $2 million order would work out to $1.08 per car. Or if Lidar hardware for one car cost about $500, then $2 million is not quite enough for one day's worth of manufacturing output.
- cyrux004 2y agoAt $1000 a piece which is the rumored price ; is around 2,000 units if they got a volume discount it would be 4,000 units
- ljlolel 2y agoIn 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_ 2y agoYes, 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.
- ben1040 2y agoAnd 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-lidar-testing/ https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/tesla-model-y-luminar-lid...
- darby_eight 2y agoWhy 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.
- amadeuspagel 2y agoMusk used to argue that since humans can drive without Lidar, cars could as well.
- stetrain 2y agoAs far as I know Musk and Tesla's position on this hasn't changed. They use Lidar for validation during R&D, they don't ship it on production vehicles.
- tensor 2y agoThat must clearly be true, but I'd like cars to driver better than humans and make use of all the tech that we can't. Academically vision only is an interesting feat, and as a backup mode for when sensors fail it makes sense to pursue vision only operation, but it seems to me that having more sensors should be superior.
- grecy 2y ago> but it seems to me that having more sensors should be superior. What do you do when the sensors disagree?
- kirubakaran 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensor_fusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensor_fusion
- neom 2y agoIt's an interesting argument, I'm sure there are lots of reasons why it's a bad argument, but the one I think about is that depth perception isn't actually fully understood, mostly, but not fully, and, an important system that is always overlooked in that argument is that the vestibular system (among others) is also involved in depth perception. You can say binocular vision is just LIDAR, but that's not the whole story.
- ryandvm 2y agoThat was always a stupid argument because if you replicate how humans do it, you're going to replicate our failure modes too. Things like being crappy at night driving, subject to optical illusions, etc. I can assure you that a human with LIDAR and RADAR built in would get around even better than without.
- blobbers 2y agoTesla R&D budget is $4B. https://usnewsfile.moomoo.com/public/MM-PersistNewsContentImage/7781/20240128/0-63371776b6ce7c95662198a34d2aa699-0-7e5d12bce5710b99be4d69f2e34bd7d0.png/big?imageMogr2/ignore-error/1/format/webp https://usnewsfile.moomoo.com/public/MM-PersistNewsContentIm... 2M? Hahaha.... >_>
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- ripjaygn 2y agoThey might be using them to train robots like Optimus, given Musk's statement. Also why is the tone of the article so toxic.
- thorncorona 2y agoThe left hates Elon.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Phil_Latio 2y agoSomewhere there is a CEO or head of engineering reading this headline thinking: I guess we are on the right track! LOL
- jonplackett 2y ago2.1 million not exactly ‘stocking up’ for a company the size of Tesla. That’s barely pocket change.
- ENGNR 2y agoMy reading is this is only for their own taxi fleet. $2M at $1000 per car = 2000 cars. Waymo has fully autonomous self driving that actually works for their taxi fleet. Waymo uses lidar. Tesla building a taxi fleet, Tesla now needs to spring the extra dosh for a bit of lidar.