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Comment by refulgentis | Hacker News Reader

I'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

Camera's are not the issue, they are dirt cheap. Its the amount of progressing power to combine that output. You can put 360 degree camera's on your car like BYD does, and have Lidar. But you simply use the lidar for the heavy lifting, and use a more lighter model for basic image recognition like: lines on the road/speed plates/etc ...

The problem with Tesla is, that they need to combine the outputs of those camera's into a 3d view, what takes a LOT more processing power to judge distances. As in needing more heavy models > more GPU power, more memory needed etc. And still has issues like a low handing sun + white truck = lets ram into that because we do not see it.

And the more edge cases you try to filter out with cameras only setups, the more your GPU power needs increase! As a programmer, you can make something darn efficient but its those edge cases that can really hurt your programs efficiency. And its not uncommon to get 5 to 10x performance drops, ... Now imagine that with LLM image recognition models.

Tesla's camera only approach works great ... under ideal situations. The issue is those edge cases and not ideal situations. Lidar deals with a ton of edge cases and removes a lot of the progressing needed for ideal situations.

Ah we found the expert here, well armchair one at least. So you have your idea of what's possible vs people doing it.

  >I'd love to take on this challenge: the article they linked shows the cost add for LIDAR (+$130)

The article claims that, but when you actually try to follow the source it fails the fact check.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46583727

Would be nice if you had been able to take it on, but as you say you don't have the data, so it's compared to nothing.

The issue isn't just the cost of the lidar units off the shelf. You have to install the sensors on the car. Modifications like that at the scale that Waymo does them (they still have less than 10K cars) are not automated and probably cost almost as much as the price of the car itself. BYD is getting around this by including them in a mass produced car, so their cost per unit is closer to the $130 off the shelf price. This is the winning combination IMO.

Waymo already has an automated integration line, and the new vehicles from Zeekr will come partially assembled from the factory as a semi-custom design so there's no modifications in the sense that you're talking about.

Tesla 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

In what sense does Tesla use their own chips?

Let me Google that for you?

They have no fabs. They're using nvidia chips on server side last I checked, and what tsmc thei own design for in car? Those aren't cheap anyway. The markup on nvidia chips is high, but it's not _that_ high.

If they design the chip it is theirs. If you are saying fabs then nearly nobody has their own chips. But they plan to make fabs too.

By that logic, nvidia also doesnt have chips lol

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