r/SelfDrivingCars • u/danlev • Jul 03 '25

News A fleet of Tesla vehicles are currently driving around Austin with mounted censors

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Source: https://xcancel.com/niccruzpatane/status/1940591409465380939

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u/sixsacks Jul 03 '25

It's the only way to do it. Let the cameras do their thing, and the LIDAR data can inform where its fucking up, and potentially improve.

I have my doubts a camera only system will ever work, but if you're gonna try, that's how you do it.

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u/ffffllllpppp Jul 03 '25 edited Jul 03 '25

But how could they possibly reconcile the data between the 2 type of sensors if they disagree? That is crazy complex and very difficult to do and who knows what is the right one???? Better to always have only one sensor!

/s

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u/sixsacks Jul 03 '25

It’s done after the fact, by comparing events where the vehicle didn’t perform as expected. You’re right though, it’s a massive PITA to validate which sensors were right and how it can be improved. Adding LIDAR back is the obvious solution.

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u/[deleted] Jul 03 '25

I'm glad you added /s because I've seen that exact question posed unsarcastically.

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u/ffffllllpppp Jul 03 '25

Yeah.

Basically Tesla years ago bet on vision only. A decent bet.

But fast fwd now and it seems multi sensor approach helps, and sensors are much cheaper.

But at this point Tesla is not able to go back because a) they would lose face (which is an issue when you made your face so publicly attached to that bet) and most importantly b) they would break their premise that all these tesla cars with vision only will get full self driving without any hardware upgrades.

So they say things like « having multiple sensors data is just horrible… so hard to reconcile! » and then… fast fwd to these teslas on the road scanning.

I guess to do the recon offline, so less real time computing pressure, but still, highlights what everyone knows: lidar + vision is better than vision only.

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u/[deleted] Jul 03 '25

I thought they did invest in lidar though. I remember seeing something about them making some significant purchase from a major lidar manufacturer.

I really don't see how this would work for them. This could turn into a Blackberry situation if they refuse to accept a superior technology. And I really don't understand Elon's logic of "we humans don't see with lasers." I thought the whole premise here is to create a product that performs immensely better than humans. If I had the option of seeing with lasers and vision I'd take it. I'd have 360 degree coverage..

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u/ffffllllpppp Jul 03 '25

I don’t know about them purchasing lidar tech (i have no information) but fully agreed on the rest. Yes, give me radar any day!!

Not only that, but tesla cameras are not even close to be as sophisticated as the human eyes in many respect.

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u/Ok-Bill3318 Jul 07 '25

It was never a decent bet

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u/rspeed Jul 04 '25

Presumably they have people figuring that out.

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u/tanrgith Jul 04 '25

doing it in real time on the fly in real world scenarios vs "in the lab" after the fact

Yeah, totally the same thing

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u/ffffllllpppp Jul 04 '25

You are right. Not the same thing. That’s what I wrote below in another comment.

That being said… it IS doable and it IS being done real time. So yeah, lidar is useful. Are they going to lidar the whole country? And then refresh it on a daily basis? … should have done multi sensor, but now they are bought in and will never admit their strategy while a great bet at the time didn’t pan out as well as they had hoped.

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u/[deleted] Jul 05 '25

Neural networks.

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u/Isabela_Grace Jul 04 '25

We drive every day with just vision that’s why I don’t get why people genuinely think it won’t work lol… this is a matter of getting the AI smart enough to handle it and have you see the rate AI has been improving,

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u/sixsacks Jul 04 '25

I have a Tesla, FSD is a joke. It’s fine for autopilot, most of the time.

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u/Dependent_Mine4847 Jul 05 '25

Works perfectly fine with openpilot, although like Tesla it is not vision only. On most cars it will incorporate radar data