Lidar vs. Tesla: the race for fully self driving cars

In the world of autonomous vehicles, lidar sensors are the center of debate. Self-driving car companies, like Cruise and Waymo, use lidar as the key ingredient to advance their autonomous vehicle navigation while skeptics, like Elon Musk, claim it to be useless. Transportation editor, Andrew Hawkins, explores the landscape of both and why exactly lidar continues to be at the forefront of complete autonomous driving. #technology #cars #lidar

[TheVerge]

How ”self–driving” do you want your self-driving car to be?

[magnuszerum]

If we are going to go with self driving cars, they need to see better than we do.

[owRekssjfjxjxuurrpqpqss]

Removing LiDAR was about cutting costs at the risk of accidents that could otherwise be avoided. 2d cameras are not great at detecting depth especially in dark environments where the sensor gain needs to be increased to the point where the image becomes noisey and far less useful. Edit: Please read my below comments for more detail on this if you are skeptical.

[LiamMarcon]

Im not a musk fan and I think his choice to remove radar was wrong. BUT were you unable or unwilling to compare equal data sets between Waymo and telsa? Could you not find Telsa data per one million miles or did you not even try? Just seems like bad reporting to put to compare two completely different stats.

[moshmosh]

We don't need self driving cars. We need self driving buses.
Imagine new york streets full with only long autonumes buses with 50 people each - it'll make traffic much more bearable

[nikkorocksalot]

With my commute times, and no train options, a driverless vehicle would get me back 20 hours a week in at least reading or working on my hobbies

[diogodokioske]

It doesn't seem fair to me to compare Waymo's accident record in miles and Tesla's in years. It would have to be in the same unit (distance or time), although distance seems to be the best indicator.

[dannyvfilms]

My understanding was cars like Waymo only operate in pre-mapped environments, where Teslas are built to “read the room” and figure out what’s in front of them. LiDAR or not, that approach makes a huge difference in the performance and limitations of the autonomous systems.

[karthikpradeep]

Truly HORRIBLE crash data comparison between Teslas on Autopilot and Waymo cars. Waymos have been in 2 crashes and 18 "minor contact incidents" (whatever that means) versus Teslas have been in 736 crashes since 2019? This isn't an apples to apples comparison. You can easily google "Tesla crash data" and see that on Autopilot, there is an average of 1 crash every 4.8 million miles on Autopilot

[noklat]

Waymo has had 2 crashes in the previous 1 million miles? Tesla cars drive collectively 1 million FSD miles per day. That is why the statistic is very skewed, you compare it to 4 years (4x365=1.460). This statistic is presented very misleading in your video.

[jacobBH]

All the sensors on waymo isn’t what makes waymos drive better than a Tesla in the 2 cities waymo works in. It’s the HD maps that tell the car every move they have to make. Where as Tesla doesn’t want to really on expensive HD maps that take an enormous amount of time and energy to maintain. Tesla has basically already solved the computer vision aspect eliminating the need for all the sensors that cost hundreds of thousands per car. 6:38, you compared Tesla autopilot and waymo, autopilot and FSD are wildly different things. FSD is way more capable and can see everything, autopilot cannot

[ChandiraG]

Autopilot < Waymo < FSD

The accidents that were reported are for Autopilot which is basically Cruise Control + Lane Keep Assist. No doubt it's a misleading name but it has led to the average person believing that Teslas are already fully autonomous which I guess was important branding.

Waymo uses HD maps which means that their cars can only drive in areas that are already mapped. This is expensive and time consuming which is why it's limited to California.

FSD on the other hand relies on vision meaning the system is self contained and given that it learns from the millions of cars world wide will eventually be able to drive themselves without supervision (L4 at least). It will never be as safe as using Lidar but it's a tradeoff that's worth it.

[VJechev]

I miss Verge science, and we need more content like this ❤. Your content recently has been all over the tech and fashion tech map.

[adamlin]

I think the Internet of Things is the ultimate way to self-driving because if everything knows about each other, than the algorithms can do the rest, but putting each thing into the IOT is the hardest part of the job.

[mattcaff]

Forget self driving cars - give us self driving buses and autonomous subways / light rail. That’s how we could actually solve many of our challenges—climate change, urban sprawl, public health problems, social isolation/disconnection, etc.

[praveshchopra]

What was not mentioned ( fatalities) in the Tesla Accidents as to how many million miles driven by tesla, also not mentioned that for lidar only you need to be geofenced and not able to drive all over

[asicdathens]

As someone who worked with GIS, photogrammetry and with reduced acuity in one eye due to surgery ( low stereoscopic vision) I can tell you the following. LiDAR does not only produces a 3D map of the environment but for every 3D point scanned detects the doppler shift so from a single image you can tell what is around you, what is moving and what is standing. Theoretically speaking, stereo cameras or arrays of cameras can achieve near human levels of seeing but your brain can Id each an every part of the environment, can tell what is moving what is dangerous can gauge distances based on proportional sizes and many more. Also cameras are susceptible to a variety of optical illusions (forced perspectives etc) different items with near same colors and so on. I do not know if LiDAR is the cure all solution for Level 5 autonomy ( the holy grail) but is close enough.

[dontbanmebrodontbanme]

We all know Elon removed LiDAR because it's expensive. With that said, however, comparing the number of crashes something like Waymo has to Tesla's cars is like saying a starting pg who plays 38 minutes a game and has 4 turnovers is more reckless with the ball than a center who plays 7 minutes a game and is only put in to play defense. Not only is the Waymo geo-fenced, it's also mapped. It can travel routes that have been mapped before. For the most part, it also can't travel on highways and is speed reduced. It's not put in nearly the same situations the Tesla is.

Again, I really wish Elon would pu the LiDAR sensors back, along with the ultrasonic sensors. I just don't like the crash number comparison.

[KaiseruSoze]

Thumbs down. You don't give your stats in accidents/miles driven. You can't compare the numbers of accidents without a a common denominator. This comparison is misleading and that makes me think The Verge was paid by WayMo to mislead the public. Typical.

[alecgrolimond]

I think you should have also included stats of accidents with no driving assist at all.