Do self-driving cars need lidar? Musk says that cameras are enough, but most disagree.
Tesla has staked its autonomous driving future on a relatively cheap solution: using cameras alone rather than a combination with the much more expensive lidar that its competitor, Google’s Waymo, employs to operate its self-driving cars.
It’s a stance that puts Tesla at odds with most Americans, new data shows.
According to new survey data from Electric Vehicle Intelligence Report, some 70% of Americans said in August that autonomous vehicles should employ both cameras and lidar, while 71% said the government should require companies to use both.
Just 3% of respondents chose “autonomous vehicles should only use cameras” as the answer closest to their view. Tesla CEO Elon Musk would appear to be among them.
That said, the vast majority of Americans also say they wouldn’t consider riding in a robotaxi in the first place, with 41% saying they’d never consider it and another 28% saying they are not considering it at this time.
Tesla is hoping that by keeping costs low for its cars, which are just a fraction of the price of Waymo’s, it will be able to scale its autonomous ambitions much more quickly and cheaply, since it says pretty much any of its cars on the road could potentially be self-driving with updated software.
The Takeaway
Musk earlier this year predicted “millions of Teslas operating autonomously” by the end of next year. So far Tesla’s Austin robotaxi program, which doesn’t have a driver but does have a safety monitor sitting in the passenger seat, has about 30 autonomous cars on the road, while Waymo operates closer to 2,000.