In the piece — titled “Can You Fool a Self Driving Car?” — Rober found that a Tesla car on Autopilot was fooled by a Wile E. Coyote-style wall painted to look like the road ahead of it, with the electric vehicle plowing right through it instead of stopping.
The footage was damning enough, with slow-motion clips showing the car not only crashing through the styrofoam wall but also a mannequin of a child. The Tesla was also fooled by simulated rain and fog.
Read about this somewhere. Iirc, Elon felt cameras were better than LiDAR at a time when that was kinda true, but the technology improved considerably in the interim and he pridefully refuses to admit he needs to adapt. [Edit: I had hastily read the referenced article and am incorrect here; link to accurate statements is linked in a reply below.]
I don’t even understand that logic. Use both. Even if one is significantly better than the other, they each have different weaknesses and can mitigate for each other.
It was always just to save money and pad the profit margins
A LiDAR sensor couldn’t add more than a few hundred to a car, surely
They ditched radar at a time when radar only added probably about $50 a car according to some estimates.
It may technically get a smidge more profitable, but it almost seems like it’s more about hubris around tech shouldn’t need more than a human to do as well. Which even if it were true, is a stupid stance to take when in that scenario you could have better than human senses.