Waymo doesn’t give a shit if their cars are ugly and can cover them in dozens upon dozens of cameras and sensors. They’re not selling them to consumers who care about looks, they are renting them to riders who don’t want to die on the short trip. They also only operate in a small region of the country with limited weather conditions and frequently stop service when weather is bad.
Tesla is run by an idiot who insists that a pair of cameras and a single lidar sensor that they keep deciding to disable can somehow magically always work in all weather and lighting conditions and is selling to consumers who don’t want an ugly car and expect to be able to operate their purchase at all times
Different constraints leads to different levels of success
Teslas have never had LiDAR on them. You don’t seem very educated on the subject you speak with such confidence of.
It’s a recent development. First the LiDAR manufacturer leaked that they sold them to Tesla. Then several teslas had been spotted with LiDAR rigged on to their roofs. Then in a lawsuit an engineer admitted they’re training fsd with LiDAR
https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/7/24151497/tesla-lidar-luminar-elon-musk-sensor-autonomous
I think you were refering to the fact that Teslas used to have radars, not LiDARs on them, then they got disabled and removed and now they’re including them on the HW4 model Y and X again. Musk himself has not been insisting anything about “pair of cameras and a single LiDAR sensor” he’s always been all about cameras only.
Why they’re buying those sensors now? Who knows. Very unlikely however that they’d be adding them to their current models. It more likely has something to do with training FSD and validating the camera data with LiDAR or then it’s related to the Robotaxi. Time will tell.
Even Tesla themselves calls the removed sensors “radar” so I don’t think your rude dismissal of GPs post is appropriate.
In 2021, we began our transition to Tesla Vision by removing radar from Model 3 and Model
Radar and LiDAR are two different instruments. One creates a 3D point cloud while the other mainly measures distance and speed. New Tesla models with hardware 4 have radars in them.
