Stefan Mileschin

Lidars are unnecessary

Tesla has shared a vast amount of details about its FSD (Full Self Driving) dual SoC 14nm computer and said that the 12 ARM core chip has a modest GPU, a custom neural network compute part, while the SoC packs 250 million gates, 6 billion transistors at 260 mm2. More importantly, Elon addressed Tesla’s apparent desire to stay away from Lidars.

Elon believes Lidar is unnecessary
The FSD compute component is being custom designed in house by Jim Keller and more recently Pete Bannon, according to a Tesla presentation still leaves Nvidia’s solution in the dust at lower power. Nvidia was always great for high end fastest things around but never figured out how to make the ARM-based power-efficient design as GPUs are traditionally power hogs. Nvidia Tegra for phones and tablets had high GPU performance but failed to compete on power consumption and the same trend seems to translate to the automotive industry efforts too. This is why Jim Keller and Pete Bannon, ex PA semi / Apple executives did a great job on a low power, high performance as Elon's car runs on batteries and really want to extend the range as far as they can.

Elon is an emotional leader who has got in trouble for that before, but it was clear that Tesla under his leadership would not jump on the Lidar bandwagon. When asked if the FSD new Tesla self-driving computer can support inputs like Lidar, Elon replied that it is an expensive and yet unnecessary sensor and compared it with an appendix in a human body. Having multiple Lidars would be as useless as having numerous appendices. He painted a clear picture, and it is clear that Waymo and many other Tier 1 automotive companies disagree.

Lidar gives military precision and can make the whole system safer, but Elon believes that Tesla can do an as good a job with its eight cameras, ultrasonic sensors, maps, and GPS that the current Tesla fleet has.

https://fudzilla.com/news/automotive...-fool-s-errand