I seem to recall that fElon prevented the self driving team from utilizing LIDAR for any part of the system, instead demanding that everything run off of optical input. Does anyone else remember the same?
this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2025
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Was just thinking this
A single LiDAR sensor prevents this kind of issue
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Yes, I recall at the time experts saying it was a terrible mistake and Elon saying Machine learning will bridge the gap.
The real reason was to increase margins.
What's cool is that Teslas used to have radar sensors, at least, but Elon removed them from production to save money. Even if you have a car from back then, the software no longer uses them and they'll just physically unplug them the next time you have the car serviced, as it's just a drain on the battery at this point 🙃
meanwhile our subaru has lidar for adaptive cruise control and emergency braking
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Who was the idiot that removed LiDar to cut costs?
/s
Elon removed the radar. Tesla cars never had lidar. What an idiot Musk.
Tesla had camera+radar+sonar, and that wasn't their own tech - they used mobileye EyeQ back then. When they switched to in house tech they gradually ditched the radar and sonar which made no sense to me. But at the time I saw their lead say in an interview that this is superior and I believed. not anymore.
they said doing so cut costs but obviously lidar/radar/sonar only gets cheaper over time, let alone the extra r&d costs because a vision only system is much more difficult to develop.
He did say lidar was "useless" though.
He's said humans don't use LiDAR so his cars shouldn't have to. Of course humans have a brain, and he's cars don't, but you can't tell him anything.
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They are so expensive too! /s
Who would have known electronics gets cheaper all the time?? /j
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This is a very good test, and the car should have past. That said though, I hate the click bait format where they show a stupidly obvious cartoonish wall, when the real wall is way more convincing.
The Video:
That sort of clickbait is 100% sure to get a "do not recommend channel" from me, I'm so sick of it. And it's sad when the video has such a good point.
The Clickbait
I can see it's kind of funny, but it's misleading.
You realize Mark Robers target audience is like 8 years old, right? He also references looney tunes and wile e coyote a couple dozen times, including in this thumbnail you're losing your mind over. The thumbnail fits the theme very well if you ask me.
This video isn't a rigorous scientific test. This is a children's video designed to get them interested in the scientific method. Get over yourself.
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YouTubers - especially large channels like this - constantly A/B test with different thumbnails and stick with whatever one drives the most traffic (no pun intended) to the video.
You might not like it, but it’s unfortunately the reality of operating a content creation business on an algorithm-driven platform.
There are plenty of channels I follow that make fantastic videos, but sometimes you have to tolerate the shitty thumbnails because that’s just the reality of the system they’re operating within.
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Have you heard of DeArrow? https://dearrow.ajay.app/
It's a browser extension that replaces clickbait thumbnails with good community sourced ones
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Well if your thumbnail is not good enough and catchy people will not watch it. Which wont make the channel profitable. Which will cause it to not exist.
I hope you know that usually youtubers will not even start making the video if they don’t have a killer thumbnail to it. Thats the platform.
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I read something a while back from a guy while wearing a T-shirt with a stop sign on it, a couple robotaxies stopped in front of him. It got me thinking you could cause some chaos walking around with a speed limit 65 shirt.
I think one of my favorite examples was using simple salt to trap them within the confines of white lines that they didn't think they could cross over. I really appreciate the imagery of using salt circles to entrap the robotic demons ...
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And that's what you get for cheaping out on tech and going with cameras over lidar. Not only that, but Tesla removed all the radar technology that literally every car uses for collision detection about a year ago.
The radar module on my truck costs $70.
The richest man on earth doesn't think the lives of your vehicle's passengers are worth $17.50 a pop.
And that's to a knuckledragger like me, buying a single radar unit online. I'm sure the manufacturer gets insane quantity discounts.