<story><title>Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers</title><url>https://www.wsj.com/articles/teslas-push-to-build-a-self-driving-car-sparks-dissent-among-its-engineers-1503593742</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Animats</author><text>Tesla&amp;#x27;s system doesn&amp;#x27;t have enough sensors.  Musk forced his engineers to try to do this almost entirely with vision processing, and that was a terrible decision.  Vision processing isn&amp;#x27;t that good yet. Everybody else uses LIDAR.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve been saying for years that the right approach was to take the technology from Advanced Scientific Concepts&amp;#x27; flash LIDAR and get the cost down. I first saw that demonstrated in 2004 on an optical bench in Santa Monica.  It became an expensive product, mostly sold to DoD.  It&amp;#x27;s expensive because the units require exotic InGaAs custom silicon and aren&amp;#x27;t made in quantity. Space-X uses one of their LIDAR units to dock the Dragon spacecraft with the space station.&lt;p&gt;Last year, Continental, the big century-old German auto parts maker, bought the technology from Advanced Scientific Concepts and started getting the cost down.[1] Volume production in 2020.  Interim LIDAR products are already shipping in volume. Continental is quietly making all the parts needed for self-driving. LIDAR. Radar. Computers. Actuators. Cameras. Software for sensor integration into an &amp;quot;environment model&amp;quot;.  They design and make all the parts needed, and provide some of the system integration.&lt;p&gt;Apple and Google were trying to avoid becoming mere low-margin Tier I auto parts suppliers.  Continental, though, is quite successful as a Tier I auto parts supplier. Revenue of €40 billion in 2016. Earnings about €2.8 billion. Dividend of €850 million. They can make money on low-margin parts.&lt;p&gt;Continental may end up quietly ruling automatic driving.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.continental-automotive.com&amp;#x2F;en-gl&amp;#x2F;Passenger-Cars&amp;#x2F;Chassis-Safety&amp;#x2F;Advanced-Driver-Assistance-Systems&amp;#x2F;Lidars&amp;#x2F;High-Resolution-3D-Flash-Lidar&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.continental-automotive.com&amp;#x2F;en-gl&amp;#x2F;Passenger-Cars&amp;#x2F;...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ccorda</author><text>Interesting research on Continental. FWIW, looks like Tesla started using Continental&amp;#x27;s radar to replace Bosch just this week:
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;teslamotorsclub.com&amp;#x2F;tmc&amp;#x2F;posts&amp;#x2F;2266769&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;teslamotorsclub.com&amp;#x2F;tmc&amp;#x2F;posts&amp;#x2F;2266769&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;I suspect that if&amp;#x2F;when LIDAR is cheap enough, Tesla will use it.&lt;p&gt;In the meantime they outfit every single car with the best hardware that is realistic from a cost standpoint today, instead of waiting til 2020.</text></comment>
<story><title>Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers</title><url>https://www.wsj.com/articles/teslas-push-to-build-a-self-driving-car-sparks-dissent-among-its-engineers-1503593742</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Animats</author><text>Tesla&amp;#x27;s system doesn&amp;#x27;t have enough sensors.  Musk forced his engineers to try to do this almost entirely with vision processing, and that was a terrible decision.  Vision processing isn&amp;#x27;t that good yet. Everybody else uses LIDAR.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve been saying for years that the right approach was to take the technology from Advanced Scientific Concepts&amp;#x27; flash LIDAR and get the cost down. I first saw that demonstrated in 2004 on an optical bench in Santa Monica.  It became an expensive product, mostly sold to DoD.  It&amp;#x27;s expensive because the units require exotic InGaAs custom silicon and aren&amp;#x27;t made in quantity. Space-X uses one of their LIDAR units to dock the Dragon spacecraft with the space station.&lt;p&gt;Last year, Continental, the big century-old German auto parts maker, bought the technology from Advanced Scientific Concepts and started getting the cost down.[1] Volume production in 2020.  Interim LIDAR products are already shipping in volume. Continental is quietly making all the parts needed for self-driving. LIDAR. Radar. Computers. Actuators. Cameras. Software for sensor integration into an &amp;quot;environment model&amp;quot;.  They design and make all the parts needed, and provide some of the system integration.&lt;p&gt;Apple and Google were trying to avoid becoming mere low-margin Tier I auto parts suppliers.  Continental, though, is quite successful as a Tier I auto parts supplier. Revenue of €40 billion in 2016. Earnings about €2.8 billion. Dividend of €850 million. They can make money on low-margin parts.&lt;p&gt;Continental may end up quietly ruling automatic driving.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.continental-automotive.com&amp;#x2F;en-gl&amp;#x2F;Passenger-Cars&amp;#x2F;Chassis-Safety&amp;#x2F;Advanced-Driver-Assistance-Systems&amp;#x2F;Lidars&amp;#x2F;High-Resolution-3D-Flash-Lidar&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.continental-automotive.com&amp;#x2F;en-gl&amp;#x2F;Passenger-Cars&amp;#x2F;...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tyrw</author><text>It depends on what you&amp;#x27;re optimizing for.  Others using LIDAR are optimizing for speed to market, while potentially sacrificing ability to solve the problem as fully.  Musk&amp;#x27;s argument is that we know for certain that the entire road system can be navigated by visual cues, because that&amp;#x27;s how humans do it.  We do not know for certain that this is possible with LIDAR.</text></comment>