Alphabet's Waymo to stop selling lidar self-driving car sensors

[u/lnfinity]

https://www.reuters.com/technology/alphabets-waymo-stop-selling-lidar-self-driving-car-sensors-sources-2021-08-27/

[u/scottjenson]

Too many commenters are saying this means "Google is giving up on Lidar". The article doesn't say that, it says they won't be selling Lidar to others. It also says "it will continue to build its lidars in-house"

This appears to be a business model issue, not a technology abandonment.

[u/ExplodingHalibut → u/scottjenson]

Lol. You’re right and google are totally into stavia too

[u/LetMePushTheButton]

Google makes temporary products that are eventually retired to their Indiana Jones warehouse alongside the ark of the covenant.

[u/Nonsequitur30]

Didn’t someone say a couple years back lidar wasn’t the answer to self driving vehicles?

[u/NoBrainsJustVibes → u/Nonsequitur30]

I think it was the guy that calls his level 2 (ish) autonomous vehicle driving software "Full Self Driving", so that guy might be an unreliable narrator.

[u/Nonsequitur30 → u/NoBrainsJustVibes]

At least someone got what I was saying… though, the downvotes said that as well.

[u/RogerMexico → u/NoBrainsJustVibes]

Cruise and Waymo are clearly the front runners right now in driverless car tech but for whatever reason people think Tesla is in the lead. I think part of that is Cruise and Waymo are doing almost all of their testing in the Bay Area while Teslas are everywhere.

Living in San Francisco and seeing Cruise and Waymo cars literally every 5 minutes has convinced me that they are way further along than most tech journalists seem to think. The Cruise Origin is already starting engineering builds and production could start next year. They may not be in every small town in America anytime soon but they are going to dominate the Bay Area where all the venture capital is concentrated.

[u/lick_it → u/RogerMexico]

Self driving is all about the edge cases. They’re not going to get a rounded training data set just testing in Bay Area.

[u/RogerMexico → u/lick_it]

Yeah, the weather here is pretty much ideal all year round. Can’t even remember the last time it rained. But the hills are crazy, the streets have lots of obstacles and like 20% of the pedestrians (in my neighborhood) are on meth. So SF is a pretty solid testing ground for a lot of the corner cases.

[u/Swirls109 → u/RogerMexico]

Oh meth pedestrians? Austin tx would like a conversation with you. Let's let the AI try dodging meth heads in a flash flood rain.

[u/RogerMexico → u/Swirls109]

I’ve been to Austin a few times over the past 10 years and the homeless situation has gotten really crazy. I don’t remember seeing a single tent any of the other times I went to Austin and now they’re everywhere. But if you think the homeless situation is bad in Austin, it’s 10 times worse in San Francisco.

[u/das_war_ein_Befehl → u/RogerMexico]

It’s because Tesla markets their unsafe tech as full self driving while Waymo/Cruise are being a bit more responsible

[u/RogerMexico → u/das_war_ein_Befehl]

To that point, the California DMV requires self-driving cars to report all miles driven on public streets, including any incidents or collisions. Tesla is noticeably absent but Waymo and Cruise are in a league of their own. I think AutoX is also ahead of Tesla but they have been doing a lot of their testing in China so there’s not as much data on them.

[u/PaleontologistWest]

This is interesting. People were saying that Tesla going for fully camera based FSD was a risky play that will pay off handsomely in the short term but might come up short over the long term. Alphabet benching lidar is a nod that Tesla might have been right. Curious to see if others stick with lidar or not. The idea being if you have lidars and cameras, more sensors = more input = better decisions. Its also apparently a lot harder to code and make both seamlessly integrate with each other.

[u/Swuuusch → u/[deleted]]

That's not even close to "primary underlying problems" being "solved".

[u/das_war_ein_Befehl → u/[deleted]]

It hasn’t. That’s why Tesla’s self driving tech is dangerous and gives people a false sense of security

[u/NoBrainsJustVibes]

I still don't see camera-only being feasible any time soon. Radar, for instance, can bounce off of objects, allowing the vehicle to see things that would be obscured for a camera lens, like a smaller car or pedestrian on the other side of a larger vehicle.

[u/Apprehensive-Hall-26]

Look at Microvision….Bosch might partner with them or even buy them out. MVIS supposed to have one of the best lidar sensors out there

Edit: invest in MVIS shares, big news coming, not financial advice just my dumbass opinion

[u/bartturner]

They were never willing to sell the better one but instead only the shorter range model.

"Waymo is only going to sell its Laser Bear Honeycomb product, a short-range sensor that has a 95-degree vertical field of view and up to 360-degree horizontal FOV, which allows one Honeycomb sensor to “do the job of three other 3D sensors stacked on top of one another,” Waymo says."