this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2025
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‘LiDAR is lame’: why Elon Musk’s vision for a self-driving Tesla taxi faltered (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 1 day ago by babysandpiper@sopuli.xyz to c/news@lemmy.world
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The company’s rollout of its new driverless cars has gotten off to a wobbly start – and rival Waymo remains well ahead

After years of promising investors that millions of Tesla robotaxis would soon fill the streets, Elon Musk debuted his driverless car service in a limited public rollout in Austin, Texas. It did not go smoothly.

The 22 June launch initially appeared successful enough, with a flood of videos from pro-Tesla social media influencers praising the service and sharing footage of their rides. Musk celebrated it as a triumph, and the following day, Tesla’s stock rose nearly 10%.

What quickly became apparent, however, was that the same influencer videos Musk promoted also depicted the self-driving cars appearing to break traffic laws or struggle to properly function. By Tuesday, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) had opened an investigation into the service and requested information from Tesla on the incidents.

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[–] Natanael@infosec.pub 6 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

The only viable competition to LIDAR is structured light (see Leap Motion, there's equivalent sensors for cars), which uses an IR source with patterned light and multiple high frame rate cameras to calculate depth from the reflections. In theory light field photography with special lenses is possible too, but far more computationally heavy for real-time use IIRC

There's some safety issues with LIDAR at close range (it's a laser! it can damage cameras, etc), which is basically the main reason to not use it. But Tesla are dumb enough to try to replace them with cameras alone, and not even using proper multi-camera techniques to calculate depth

[–] NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip 2 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Can it really cause damage? Lidar is flown constantly, and all of googles street view had been ran with lidar. That's millions of miles of data collection and I haven't heard of any negative effects. I get that it is a laser, but is duration and distance must be big factors.

Not saying you are wrong, just looking to quanitfy the risks.

[–] Natanael@infosec.pub 1 points 16 hours ago (2 children)
[–] Widdershins@lemmy.world 1 points 16 hours ago

You mean to say the cars of the future can take out security cameras. That's not a negative. Security cameras are the surveillance state. If you want to take them out with today's cars you've gotta ram them and bang out the dents in your car.

[–] NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip 1 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Thanks for the article. That is interesting. It also is confusing that they wrote "Lidar is not the only thing that can damage camera sensors – lasers are just as harmful." Uh...Lidar is Laser.

But it is in so many fields, even devices with cameras. Apple has been adding Lidar to their phones/tablets for 5 years now. Why is this an issue now? Like I said, there is a TON of Lidar in use everyday.

[–] Natanael@infosec.pub 1 points 13 hours ago

Cars use stronger LIDAR lasers than the phones. The bigger range and faster response time requires it.