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BYD's cheapest electric cars to have Lidar self-driving tech
- cadamsdotcom 8mo agoDisruption at its finest :)
- senti_sentient 8mo agoSomeone said that LiDAR is too expensive, camera is better :)
- iknowstuff 8mo agoAnd then made the best adas on the market using cameras
- refulgentis 8mo agoI've struggled with this over the years, but think we can call it at this point: Waymo is definitely better. Just too much real world data. (i.e. scaled paid service, no drivers, multiple cities, for 1 year+)
- DustinBrett 8mo agoWe being who? What is your evidence it's better? The fact all the cars stopped moving when the power went out? The fact they cost WayMore? Show the evidence for your claims. And they have remote operators as proven by the power outage.
- refulgentis 8mo agoApologies, I was unclear with the "i.e." bit I assume, to spell it out: I think after struggling with it over years its time to call it because Waymo has a scaled paid service, no drivers, multiple cities, for 1 year+.
- DustinBrett 8mo agoBut I told you it wasn't without drivers, so where is the response there or acknowledgment of the fact they all went down?
- refulgentis 8mo agoIt’s because you spam this thread so much with such aggressive language that it honestly is scary to deal with you. You’re smart Darren, and so are other people, you should assume I knew the cars have remote backup operators. Again, you’re smart, you also know why that doesn’t mitigate having a scaled robotaxi service vs. nothing I doubt you’ll chill out but here’s a little behind the scenes peek for you that also directly address what you’re saying: a big turning point for me was getting a job at Google and realizing Elon was talking big game but there’s 100,000 things you gotta do to run a robot taxi service and Tesla was doing none of them. The epiphany came when I saw the windshield wipers for cameras and lidar. You might note even a platonically ideal robotaxi service would always have capacity for remote operation.
- DustinBrett 8mo agoI can't tell if this was suppose to be for me, I am not Darren. The reply was on my thread... My replies are at the same level as that which I respond to, never aggressive IMO. And if you "knew" something about the relevant topic and leave it out, that in itself is part of the dishonesty. So once you got a job at Google then you felt Waymo was better, hmmm. Tesla has a robot taxi service that in some cases has nobody in the car. Also everyone that owns a Tesla has experienced FSD in which it goes from A to B without being touched which is the same as it driving by itself. A person just went cross country and back with this. So to say Tesla is doing none of the 100,000 things you think are required, I think that says more about what someone at Google thinks is needed vs what is happening on the ground. I am not against remote operation in some cases, but those suggesting Waymo has solved this need to admit that it relies heavily on them for basic decision, like what to do when the power goes out at intersections.
- imtringued 8mo ago
- Mawr 8mo agoWaymo operates without a safety driver. That's a slam dunk right there. No, some edge case that made the cars fail safely during a power outage doesn't compare. If that's the best you can come up with, you've got nothing.
- DustinBrett 8mo agoThe safety driver is the remote operator that makes decisions for things as basic as uncontrolled intersections.
- iknowstuff 8mo agoWaymo is fully autonomous, FSD is an adas for consumers. Robotaxi is a separate product. They are fantastic at driving but until they remove supervisors it’s a moot comparison
- refulgentis 8mo agoAh, I see. ADAS as in "assistance on a car I can buy", makes sense.
- terminalshort 8mo agoIs it really comparable, though? What is better a Ferrari or a Ford Ranger? That depends on if you are trying to go fast or haul 500 lbs of stuff across town. Waymo is a much better completely autonomous robo taxi in limited areas mapped to the mm, but if I want an autonomous driving system for my personal car to go wherever I want, Tesla FSD is the better option.
- Rebelgecko 8mo agoBy what metric? In terms of deaths, injuries, and crashes per mile their Full Self Driving at least an order of magnitude behind Waymo
- DustinBrett 8mo agoShow the proof then with links to unbias articles and the numbers/math.
- iknowstuff 8mo agoWaymo is not an adas. There’s nothing close to FSD 14 abilities out there for consumers. And your stats comparing to waymo are made up and debunked in the very reddit thread they came from
- cyberax 8mo agoSure. And Tesla doesn't have robotaxis at all, they're still playing in the kindergarten league. So Tesla is in a weird state right now. Tesla's highway assist is shit, it's worse than Mercedes previous generation assist after Tesla switched to the end-to-end neural networks. The new MB.Drive Assist Pro is apparently even better. FSD attempts to work in cities. But it's ridiculously bad, it's worse than useless even in simple city conditions. If I try to turn it on, it attempts to kill me at least once on my route from my office to my home. So other car makers quite sensibly avoided it, until they perfected the technology.
- durandal1 8mo agoFor anyone who has or has experienced the latest gen FSD from Tesla this comes across as a complete lie. Why would you spend energy lying on HN of all places?
- qwerpy 8mo agoI recently went on vacation and rented a 7 year old Model X and the FSD on it (v12) was better than nothing but not great, especially after having v14 on my truck drive 99% of my miles. It truly is a life-changer for people fortunate enough to have it, so it's always jarring to see the misinformed/dishonest comments online. It's still not perfect but at this point I would trust it more than the average human and certainly more than a new/old/exhausted/inebriated/distracted driver.
- cr125rider 8mo agoThat’s not true at all. Tesla taxis aren’t even close to Waymo’s capabilities.
- iknowstuff 8mo agoI said adas, nothing about waymo. That being said, yes they are, I ride them every day.
- kelnos 8mo agoHow can you possibly say that Tesla taxis have similar capabilities to Waymos when the former requires a safety driver to be present?
- iknowstuff 8mo agoBecause I use them both and I can tell Teslas are really, really good at driving, and more naturally than Waymo at that. Obviously there’s a reason they’re still supervised but if they manage to climb that mountain it’s game over for waymo
- DustinBrett 8mo agoWhere is the proof/evidence for this statement?
- jeltz 8mo agoCurious how you only ask this to people who claim Teslas are bad and not to people who claim Teslas are good.
- DustinBrett 8mo agoAny claims I care to learn about I would like evidence. Only anti-Tesla folks seem to be lacking it.
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- kcb 8mo agoI was just thinking about this on my 60 mile FSD driver I just finished. Basically inevitable that I would shortly go HN or reddit and read how FSD doesn't work. FSD is here, it wasn't 3 or 4 years ago when I first bought a Tesla, but today it's incredible.
- jandrewrogers 8mo agoThe long-term view of LIDAR was not so much that it was expensive, though it was at the time. The issue is that it is susceptible to interference if everyone is using LIDAR for everything all the time and it is vulnerable to spoofing/jamming by bad actors. For better or worse, passive optical is much more robust against these types of risks. This doesn't matter much when LIDAR is relatively rare but that can't be assumed to remain the case forever.
- consumer451 8mo agoI am just some schmoe, but optics alone can be easily spoofed as any fan of the Wile E. Coyote has known for decades. [0] What's crazy to me is that anyone would think that anything short of ASI could take image based world understanding to true FSD. Tesla tried to replicate human response, ~"because humans only have eyes" but largely without even stereoscopic vision, ffs. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQJL3htsDyQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQJL3htsDyQ
- wongarsu 8mo agoBut optical illusions are much less of an issue because humans understand them and also suffer from them. That makes them easier to detect, easier to debug, and much less scary to the average driver. Sure, someone can put up a wall painted to look like a road, but we have about a century of experience that people will generally not do that. And if they do it's easy to understand why that was an issue, and both fixing the issue (removing the mural) and punishing any malicious attempt at doing this would be swift
- consumer451 8mo ago> and punishing any malicious attempt at doing this would be swift Is this a joke? Graffiti is now punishable and enforced by whom exactly? Who decides what constitutes an illegal image? How do you catch them? What if vision-only FSD sees a city-sanctioned brick building's mural as an actual sunset? So you agree that all we need is AGI and human-equal sensors for Tesla-style FSD, but wait... plus some "swift" enforcement force for illegal murals? I love this, I have had heath issues recently, and I have not laughed this hard for a while. Thank you. Hell, at the last "Tesla AI Day," Musk himself said ~"FSD basically requires AGI" - so he is well aware.
- leobg 8mo agoThat isn’t the point. The point is that it’s not enough to figure out that there is an obstacle. You also have to figure out what that obstacle is, and you have to predict its movement. In the case of pedestrian, the car, for example, needs to know whether the pedestrian has seen you. Things like that you just cannot do with LiDAR. Hence you’re gonna need cameras anyway. Hence tge “anyone relying on LiDAR is doomed” prediction.
- AnotherGoodName 8mo agoLidars come down in price ~40x. https://cleantechnica.com/2025/03/20/lidars-wicked-cost-drop/amp/ https://cleantechnica.com/2025/03/20/lidars-wicked-cost-drop... Meanwhile visible light based tech is going up in price due to competing with ai on the extra gpu need while lidar gets the range/depth side of things for free. Ideally cars use both but if you had to choose one or the other for cost you’d be insane to choose vision over lidar. Musk made an ill timed decision to go vision only. So it’s not a surprise to see the low end models with lidar.
- refulgentis 8mo ago^ this, the article is quoting LIDAR price ($25K) from years ago.
- DustinBrett 8mo agoShow the cost differences and do the math then come back to us before you can suggest what decisions were ill timed. Otherwise it's just armchair engineering.
- refulgentis 8mo agoI'd love to take on this challenge: the article they linked shows the cost add for LIDAR (+$130) -- -- but I'm not sure how to get data on ex. how much Tesla is charged for a Nvidia whatever or what compute Waymo has -- My personal take is Waymo uses cameras too so maybe we have to assume the worst case, +full cost of lidar / +$130
- iknowstuff 8mo agoTesla uses their own chips. Chips which you can’t skip by using lidar because you still need to make decisions based on vision. A sparse distance cloud is not enough
- kadoban 8mo agoIn what sense does Tesla use their own chips?
- cyberax 8mo agoKeep in mind, that $25k AUD is just $16600. And for that price, you're getting a real car with driver-assist features and a reasonable crash safety rating. The US car manufacturers are cooked.
- WheatMillington 8mo agoUS manufacturers are fine because the US has a long history of economic protectionism. These cars are effectively banned in the US due to tariffs which protect US automakers.
- intrasight 8mo agoMore importantly, the US will ban Chinese automation tech. Which is just fine by me. But I drive a 10 year old car. Tariffs alone can't keep out cheap foreign products.
- latch 8mo agoAren't you missing something? Gemini tells me that non-NA market makes up 33% of Ford's sales, and 51% of GMs. So a better way to put it is "protects US automakers in the US." And that assumes NA manufacturers would be unaffected by declining sales abroad.
- aetherspawn 8mo agoI heard from a friend he paid around $12k AUD for the cheapest new ICE car, Holden brand, which I guess proves the west can compete if they try? Edit: Holden Spark.
- jhy 8mo agoNew? You haven't been able to buy a new Holden since '21.
- AnotherGoodName 8mo agoWell the best comparison are the Teslas which are made in China (all Teslas sold in Australia today) vs Teslas made in the USA. For the model 3 it’s USD$8000 cheaper like for like.
- DustinEchoes 8mo agoStill not convinced of the safety of lidar. I guess all these cars with cheap lidar sensors on board will generate real world safety data over the next few years.
- senti_sentient 8mo agoWhy not? And cheap is a relative term, from American point of view these sensors may be expensive because they have to buy it from suppliers, from BYD’s perspective it could be home grown given they are by far the most vertically integrated vehicle manufacturer.
- DustinEchoes 8mo agoSee here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46110395 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46110395
- neilv 8mo agoWhat if the real world safety data over time is... secret retinal damage to millions of walkers and runners, with symptoms attributed to Covid mysteries (and not obviously due to vision), and it takes years more before someone happens to get enough data, and does the right study analysis, and then there's industry with strong incentive not to be on the hook for blinding millions of people? If the tech industry has taught us anything, it's that big money is still as irresponsible and greedy as ever. I suppose that one small bit of hope is that one of the most obvious bad actors in general happened to be opposed to Lidar, and might like to screw competitors with a scandal. So the news might come out, after much tragic damage is done.
- Tycho 8mo agoHow do you train a model to drive with LiDAR when the human drivers who generate the training data don’t use LiDAR?
- knallfrosch 8mo agoScan with LiDAR while manually driving.
- jayd16 8mo agoHell, you could even use slower offline 3d reconstruction of vision data for training, and still ultimately rely on runtime LiDAR.
- Tycho 8mo agoBut the driver isn’t reacting to any of the LiDAR readings, only what they can see, so what is the point?
- aniviacat 8mo agoYou label the recordings that involve a crash, and use the lidar to avoid doing the same.
- wongarsu 8mo agoMy impression was that the state of the are was still to generate high-level data from your inputs, then react with a mixture of ML and algorithmic rules to those inputs. For example you'd use a mix of LIDAR and vision to detect that there's a pedestrian, use past frames and ML to predict the pedestrian's next position, then algorithmically check whether your vehicle's path is likely to intersect with the pedestrian's path and take appropriate action if that's the case Under that model, LIDAR training data is easy to generate. Create situations in a lab or take recordings from real drives, label them with the high-level information contained in them and train your models to extract it. Making use of that information is the next step but doesn't fundamentally change with your sensor choice, apart from the amount of information available at different speeds, distances and driving conditions
- Tempest1981 8mo agoThe roof mount seems very practical, but it's a look that may turn off some buyers... buyers who care about looks. For SUVs, maybe it could be blended in with a roof air scoop, like on some off-road trucks. Or a light bar. Where is the LiDAR on the Atto 1? In the grille? How much worse is the field of view?
- senti_sentient 8mo agoMy personal take is that if users can get used to the notch on the iPhone , they could get used to that too.
- protastus 8mo agoMy impression is that Chinese consumer products haven't been hijacked by the "design above everything else" mindset. The priority is to make things work at scale. American product design is obsessed with appearance and finish. Products end up costing 3 times more and functionality is degraded.
- barbazoo 8mo agoAlso car as a status symbol. If you look at it more utilitarian it’s not that bad as long it’s somehow compatible with a roof rack or box.
- senti_sentient 8mo agoI have noticed that in Chinese web / app design philosophy as well, it’s always function over form.
- JBlue42 8mo agoFor real? Every car has looked the same for past 10-15 years. Crossover SUV no matter the brand or big ass truck with flat front. Not to mention the monstrosity that is the Cybertruck that should never have been allowed on the road.
- didntknowyou 8mo agoi think over time tastes will change as people appreciate that function can define form, unlike the other way round
- hnburnsy 8mo agoRelated: Volvo drops LIDAR... https://www.carscoops.com/2025/11/volvo-says-sayonara-to-lidar-sensors/ https://www.carscoops.com/2025/11/volvo-says-sayonara-to-lid...
- senti_sentient 8mo agoAren’t they Chinese owned?
- vachina 8mo agoTheir lidar implementation was burning other people’s camera sensors
- ra7 8mo agoVolvo had contract issues with Luminar: > In a statement, a Volvo Cars USA spokesperson added the decision was made “to limit the company’s supply chain risk exposure, and it is a direct result of Luminar’s failure to meet its contractual obligations to Volvo Cars.”
- teleforce 8mo agoAre you serious, a car with Lidar sensor that's not even available in Bugatti Tourbillon that cost 500x more? Joking aside, this BYD Seagull, or Atto 1 in Australia (AUD$24K) and Dolphin Surf in Europe (￡18K in the UK), is one the cheapest EV cars in the world and selling at around ￡6K in China. It's priced double in Australia and triple in the UK compared to its original price in China. It's also one of China best selling EV cars with 60K unit sold per month on average. Most of the countries scrambling to block its sales to protect their own car industry or increase the tariff considerably. It's a game changing car and it really deserve the place in EV car world Hall of Fame, as one of the legendary cars similar Austin 7, the father of modern ICE car including BMW Dixi and Datsun Type 11. [1] BYD_Seagull: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BYD_Seagull https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BYD_Seagull [2] Austin 7: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austin_7 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austin_7
- dotancohen 8mo agoI agree with every word about the BYD, in fact I just recently helped a family member buy one. But how would you pick the Austin 7 over the Model T as your example revolutionary car? Serious question, you're obviously knowledgeable if you mentioned that vehicle.
- teleforce 8mo agoYou can check the video on the early generation cars reviewed by the famous Top Gear team members [1]. Austin 7 and its derivatives (notably Dixi that kickstarted the highly successful BMW car business), dictated and popularized the modern car architecture, interfaces and controls stereotype as we know today. In order to drive old cars prior to Austin 7, we probably need a manual before we can drive them except the Cadillac Type 53 car, the original car that heavily inspired the Austin 7. Austin 7 is the lightest car and cheapest proper car of its generation, and even by today's standard and inflation. As crazy as it sounds you can even drive it now in the UK road without any modification [2]. It become the template of modern cars, made popular in the UK, Germany and Japan, and then the rest of the world since these three countries are major manufacturers of modern cars. The lighweight and low cost price of the baby Seagull (smallest BYD), is very similar to Baby Austin (popular name for Austin 7 in the UK) innovation criteria. [1] Jeremy Clarkson and James May Find the First Car [video]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46409075 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46409075 [2] Everyone should try this! 1924 Austin Seven - no synchromesh, uncoupled brakes, in the rain! [video]: https://youtu.be/HpwSKVJptKw https://youtu.be/HpwSKVJptKw
- ekjhgkejhgk 8mo agoTesla is so dead.
- lamontcg 8mo agoTrade protectionism in the USA will keep it going here. We're going to look so backwards and "soviet" after a while.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- senti_sentient 8mo agoIt will still be there as a meme stock
- black_13 8mo ago[dead]
- cchance 8mo agoNot gonna lie if BYD came to the US, i'd sell my Model 3 in a heartbeat like 0 debate
- paxys 8mo agoThat's the reason why it will never be allowed to come to the US.
- mxkopy 8mo ago“Competition breeds innovation”
- machomaster 8mo agoAmerican capitalists are fans of inbreeding...
- amanaplanacanal 8mo agoAmerican oligarchs won't put up with any competition.
- roadbuster 8mo agoIt has less to do with "oligarchs" and more to do with protectionism over domestic industry: retain jobs in America, preserve worker income taxes revenue, capture taxation of corporate profits, tilt the scales in favour of an American business becoming a global exporter of their products, keep development of high-tech assets under American regulatory control.
- Sohcahtoa82 8mo agoI'd expect all the free-market capitalists and libertarians to make a lot of noise against government interference, even if the purpose is to retain domestic jobs.
- HDThoreaun 8mo ago
- VerifiedReports 8mo agoHow do we know that all these lasers aren't harming people's eyes?
- SideQuark 8mo agoBecause we have science. Laser frequency, power, and pulse length, among other things, are chosen to be eye safe. You’ll get far more energy dumped into your eye from a blue sky.
- VerifiedReports 8mo agoDo you have the science?
- lngnmn2 8mo ago[dead]
- Animats 8mo agoNarrow field of view LIDAR units have been moderately priced for years. Forward looking LIDAR is useful for anti-collision systems. It doesn't yield the situational awareness of full coverage needed for full autonomy, but it's good for putting on the brakes.
- rippeltippel 8mo agoHow much "connected" are BYD cars, in terms of sending drivers' data to their Chinese mothership?
- senti_sentient 8mo agoProbably less than what’s being sent to the “American Empire” by Teslas
- ggm 8mo agoI don't expect FSD any time soon. I think its bunkum. But assistive devices are well embedded. reversing tones. rear vision cameras. So, adding something which can do side knock, pavement risk, sideswipe, blind spot, or 'pace to car in front' type stuff is a bit obvious if you ask me, and if it's optional, then all I want is the minimal wiring harness cost amortized out so retrofit isn't too hard. I hope BYD also continues to do "real switches" and "smaller TV dashboard" choices because I'm not a fan of touch screen, and large screen.
- simianparrot 8mo agoWhy do we want CCP vehicles spying on us outside China? Did we forget everything we learned over the last decades..?
- aurareturn 8mo agoIf you're a US citizen, it's far safer for the CCP to be spying on you than the US government.
- simianparrot 8mo agoThat's such a dishonest argument.
- wtcactus 8mo agoMy present car is 18 years (and, other than 2 non functioning buttons that I decided I didn’t want to pay to replace), working perfectly fine. And, I should say, I’m a terrible owner. This car had (at most) 10 maintenance checks (and oil changes) in its life. Emphasis in “at most”. I intend to buy a new one in about 3 years and there’s no chance in hell I’m going for something shiny that breaks after 5 years like this fully made in China stuff (even Teslas are cumbersome to maintain according to statistics). I want a car to last at least 15 years with very little servicing, not some disposable tech gadget that I can’t be sure it will work next month without some shop time. P.S. The car is a Mazda 2.
- senti_sentient 8mo agoChinese cars have come a long way, most of them have better quality than any European maker. And almost of them come with very long warranty periods as well. Go take a test drive in one to find out what you been missing out on.
- wtcactus 8mo ago> Chinese cars have come a long way, most of them have better quality than any European maker. That's just not true. They absolutely don't. There's no chance in hell most (or any for that matter) Chinese carmaker has better quality than a Volvo, or a BMW, or a Mercedes or an Audi, or, etc, etc
- senti_sentient 8mo agoFeel free to live in your cocoon, I have owned several euro cars, including e36 m3. Now own BYD Dolphin and Shark, the European car industry is history mate.
- wtcactus 8mo agoSure we should all trust your word instead of the readily available stats that say exactly the opposite..
- burnt-resistor 8mo agoSo is this true, or only true for Australian markets? I've seen (presumably real from reputable sellers) BYD cars on AliBaba for $9500 USD. Not US or probably even EU homologation, but vehicles that could be used off-road or in remote areas elsewhere.
- michaelhoney 8mo agoI would love to see self-driving cars start to incorporate thermal cameras for animal avoidance. A deer or a kangaroo can come out of nowhere visually, but would be easily detectable with a wide-angle thermal camera.