Investments into re-engineering production to bring down cost is done when there is a market large enough for said product.

True self-driving is still a baby that needs to grow and cannot even compete against an adult human with 30+ years of experience. As self driving actually forms to that level the market will grown.

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fooblaster 5 days ago | parent [-]

Why do all of you think prices haven't come down? I can buy an AT128 from hesai for a few hundred dollars in volume. It's higher performance than any spinning lidar I could buy in 2017.

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yndoendo 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

You may have interpreted that and that is not what I said.

Once a product starts to sell after initial design, time is take to reduce the development cost. Try to reuse parts or replace part A with B. A machine from early 2018 can be little different than ones going out the door late 2018. _Kaizen_ was coined for this.

My point of view of when mass reduction in cost will be when self-driving is cost effect secondary feature on all Toyota vehicles. I see that as the litmus test for knowing that self-driving has reached true utility.

Also well designed vehicles would need a multi-sensor system to operate in self-driving mode. A human operating a car is using multi-sensor intake. Lack of multi-sensor in humans prevent them from operating a vehicle. Blind people need a secondary sensory input like walking stick. Vehicles need a multi-sensor system to prevent harming, mutilating, and killing the passengers and pedestrians.

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weinzierl 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Elon's bet was one LIDAR against a bunch of cameras. A few hundred dollars is still way too much when you can get the cameras for a few tens.

	▲	Applejinx 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		In what universe is 'a few hundred dollars is way too much' for implementing full self-driving on an autonomous vehicle that moves like, and at the speeds of and in the spaces of, an automobile? A two to four ton vehicle that can accelerate like a Ferrari and go over 100 mph, fully self-driving, and 'a few hundred dollars is way too much'. Disagree. Even as they are dialing back the claims, which may or may not affect how people use the vehicles. These things respond too quickly for flaky senses based on human sensoriums.