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Comment by petilon | Hacker News Reader

> There are multiple tells that this move, just like the removal of radar, is supply-chain and cost-driven and not actually driven by engineering.

Not true. Elon Musk has long maintained that cameras/vision is all that is needed [1]. After all, that's all a human has.

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/22/anyone-relying-on-lidar-is...

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> After all, that's all a human has.

As a human that has only eyes, I've smashed the underside of my front bumper on many a curb over the years in various cars because just sight alone, blocked by the hood and front end of a car is a crappy way of judging things like that.

I say this as someone who absolutely loves his Model3.. but a step back is a step back, no matter how one spins it.

Radar-delete was a user experience negative for me as well. My autopilot experience today is far more 'jerky jerk' in terms of stop/go traffic than it ever was in the glory days of 'radar distancing data', so much so that AP is now banned on anything but 'smooth sailing highway driving' when I have certain motion sick vulnerable individuals in the car. Add on to that it's now (rightfully, given it's lost the radar available data) far more touchy about weather conditions before it'll even engage. :(

Absolutely agree. I think all self-driving cars should be required to have LiDARs.

I was just reporting what Musk said:

"Elon Musk reportedly demanded cameras over radar in self-driving cars because human eyes don't rely on radar" [1].

Are the down-votes intended for Musk?

[1] https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/elon-musk-reportedl...

Your wording, especially the "Not true" puts it in your own voice.

Not to mention, just repeating Musk's statement in the context you did (as a response to someone explicitly disagreeing already) implies that you agree with it.

It is not true that the decision is not driven by engineering; we know that because Musk has been anti-LiDAR and anti-radar from the beginning.

> is not true that the decision is not driven by engineering; we know that because Musk has been anti-LiDAR and anti-radar from the beginning

This shows some level of consistency. Not the source of a viewpoint. (Counterfactual: they had radar, and now they don't.)

Your eyes are an incredible set of cameras. They have huge dynamic range, extremely accurate and fast depth sensing capabilities, huge focal distance range, and mounts that move incredibly quickly and precisely to point at details.

There are a lot of good reasons why you shouldn't think that today's cameras are equivalent to human eyes. There are a lot of good reasons to believe that cameras will never be equivalent to human eyes.

Critically, your eyes are connected to a human brain, which is by far the most capable visual-spatial computational system in the known universe. Also critically: even your eyes + brain get things wrong all the time while driving.

I love the "humans do it with only two cameras!" comment. It's so funny to see people disregard the human brain, as if any computer today can hold a candle the the visual processing prowess it contains.

I say this as a happy Model 3 owner: Elon is remarkably stupid (or perhaps outright disingenuous) sometimes.

  > After all, that's all a human has.

And a general intelligence. Let's not forget about that tiny little detail.

Give it another month or so.

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