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.
With vision you rely on external source or flood light. Its also how our civilization is designed to function in first place.
Anyway, the whole self driving obsession is ridiculous because being driven around in a bad traffic isn’t that much better than driving in bad traffic. It’s cool but can’t beat a the public infrastructure since you can’t make the car dissipated when not in use.
IMHO, connectivity to simulate public transport can be the real sweet spot, regardless of sensor types. Coordinated cars can solve traffic and pretend to be trains.
Agreed that public transportation is usually the best option in either case, though.
Coordinated cars won't work unless all cars are built the same and all maintained 100% the same and regularly inspected. You can't have a car driving 2 inches from the car in front, if it can't stop just as fast as the car in front. People already neglect their cars, change brake compounds, and get stuck purchasing low quality brake parts due to lack of availability of good components.
Next time you see some total beater driving down the road, imagine that car 2 inches off your rear bumper, not even a computer can make up for poor maintenance. Imagine that 8000lb pickup with it's cheap oversized tires right in your rearview mirror with it's headlights in your face. It's not going to be able to stop either.
you know a lot about the light you are sending, and what the speed of light is, so you can filter out unexpected timings, and understand multiple returns
Even ignoring various current issues with Lidar systems that aren’t fundamental limitations, large amounts of road infrastructure is just designed around vision and will continue to be for at least another few decades. Lidar just fundamentally can’t read signs, traffic lights or road markings in a reliable way.
Personally I don’t buy the argument that it has to be one or the other as Tesla have claimed, but between the two, vision is the only one that captures all the data sufficient to drive a car.
> Lidar just fundamentally can’t read signs, traffic lights or road markings in a reliable way.
Actually, given that basically every meaningful LIDAR on the market gives an "intensity" value for each return, in surprisingly many cases you could get this kind of imaging behavior from LIDAR so long as the point density is sufficient for the features you wish to capture (and point density, particularly in terms of points/sec/$, continues to improve at a pretty good rate). A lot of the features that go into making road signage visible to drivers (e.g. reflective lettering on signs, cats eye reflectors, etc) also result in good contrast in LIDAR intensity values.
I think fsd should be both at minimum though. No reason to skimp on a niw inexpensive sensor that sees things vision alone doesn’t.
> So it’s not a surprise to see the low end models with lidar.
They could be going for a Tesla-esque approach, in that by equipping every car in the fleet with lidar, they maximise the data captured to help train their models.
And if he still doesn’t realize and admit he is wrong then he is just plain dumb.
Pride is standing in the way of first principles.
LIDAR is also straight up worthless without an unholy machine learning pipeline to massage its raw data into actual decisions.
Self-driving is an AI problem, not a sensor problem - you aren't getting away from AI no matter what you do.
I mean, you have to have vision to drive. What are you getting at? You can't have a lidar only autonomous vehicle.
>Lidars come down in price ~40x.
Ars cites this China Daily article[0], which gives no specifics and simply states:
>A LiDAR unit, for instance, used to cost 30,000 yuan (about $4,100), but now it costs only around 1,000 yuan (about $138) — a dramatic decrease, said Li.
This article[1] from around the same time gives more specifics, listing under "1000 yuan LiDARs" the RoboSense MX, Hesai Technology ATX, Zvision Technologies ZVISION EZ5, and the VanJee Technology WLR-760.
The RoboSense MX is selling for $2,000-3,000, so it's not exactly $138. It was going to be added to XPENG cars, before they switched away from LiDAR. Yikes.
The ATX is $1400, the EZ5 isn't available, and the WLR-760 is $3500. So the press release claims of sub-$200 never really materialized.
Furthermore, all of these are low beam count LiDARs with a limited FOV. These are 120°x20°, whereas Waymo sensors cover 360°x95° (and it still needs 4 of them).
It seems my initial skepticism was well placed.
>if you had to choose one or the other for cost you’d be insane to choose vision over lidar
[0] https://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202503/06/WS67c92b5ca310c...
[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/china-beijing-international-a...
Yes, humans don’t have built in lidar. But humans do use tools to augment their capabilities. The car itself is one example. Birds don’t have jet engines, props, or rotors… should we not use those?
If there are single bulbs displaying red, green and yellow please give clear examples.
-- 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
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
[2] Austin 7:
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
[2] Everyone should try this! 1924 Austin Seven - no synchromesh, uncoupled brakes, in the rain! [video]:
Aww
The number of times I need to do this in daily driving is approximately zero.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/10/human-rights-...
> No demonstration of alignment (0-22 points)
What does "no demonstration of alignment" mean in this context?
Eastern companies often don't proactively demonstrate compliance beyond what's legally required, especially to Western NGOs. Does this lack of demonstration actually prove they're violating human rights?
The US car manufacturers are cooked.
And somehow US consumers feel comfortable paying more for worse cars.
It's baffling and a complete self goal.
The GMC dealership near me is spilling full-size++ pick-ups and enormous Suburban/Tahoe/whatevers out of it's lot and onto the grass. The average sticker is ~$48K/~$750 per month and, depending on driving habits, it can cost hundreds of dollars per week to run these vehicles. That's to say nothing of insurance, maintenance and the cost of replacing those monster truck tires every 2-3 years.
Compare all that to a BYD you could realistically buy outright for $10-15K and charge in your driveway every night.
We saw that during the 80-s, with the Japanese cars.
I don't know what the real barrier to success will be, but I don't think it will be blindness. It may be difficulty competing on labor cost, but that's a good case for carefully applied tariffs to keep competition fair.
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.
Tariffs alone can't keep out cheap foreign products.
Biden put a 100% tariff on Chinese cars and then Trump added tariffs on inputs.
Americans are getting screwed!
Edit: Holden Spark.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Spark#Discontinuatio...
For the model 3 it’s USD$8000 cheaper like for like.
If these cars are to be sold in western markets, there needs to be strong regulation. Absolutely no digital data connections, for starters.
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.
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.
https://www.carscoops.com/2025/11/volvo-says-sayonara-to-lid...
> 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.”
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?
American product design is obsessed with appearance and finish. Products end up costing 3 times more and functionality is degraded.
We're going to look so backwards and "soviet" after a while.
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.
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
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.
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
put the car in a video game and raytrace what the lidar would see