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I keep hearing this argument which makes no sense. I guess it comes from Tesla marketing because they keep repeating that and it rubs off?

On technical level two sensors are clearly better than one even if you just pick one in case of disagreement, but as others have said Kalman filters and other more advanced techniques exist. There is a reason airplanes or spacecraft have multiple redundant sensors like this for decades.

The argument only makes sense if you want to save money, but then say you are being cheap up front.




It's literally not even how "Sensor fusion" works, even in the most trivial example. As long as most errors are independent per sensor, you can combine them for a more confident result.

It is indeed Tesla marketing that posits otherwise, which is wrong, and Tesla fans eat it up.


Yeah the “disagreement between sensors” is largely overblown by Tesla when they were trying to rationalize cutting parts.

Somehow everyone else has figured it out, and even Tesla knows how to do it and have done it for years.

It’s pure bunk that’s used to cover for other decisions and now gets parroted around


I could believe that for radar (and lidar) but not for ultra sonic sensors which cost close to 0.


I mean, this is the car company that decided to skip rain sensors for cost reasons.

I own a Tesla but I also acknowledge that Elon will claw every last dollar he can to increase margins even by a few cents.


Karpathy explains the reasoning on Lex's podcast[1]. This was after he left Tesla, but of course he's hardly impartial.

[1] https://youtu.be/cdiD-9MMpb0?feature=shared&t=5279


> On technical level two sensors are clearly better than one even if you just pick one in case of disagreement

Can you explain this? If you always pick the same one in case of disagreement, what is the purpose of the other sensor? You're not getting any additional information when they agree.


the issue is, more of these sensors costs a lot of money, so can you get to the point that it's a business and not a science experiment if each vehicle costs a massive amount? if you can get away with some sensors and not others, you have lower costs. Of course, if cost is not a factor, more sensors is better.


"The argument only makes sense if you want to save money, but then say you are being cheap up front."


well, you aren't being cheap. If you can get to where you want to go without lidar, why would you want to spend more money on lidar. If you can't it's a different matter.


Great! In some sense, then, you are agreeing rather than arguing ;P. The point was if they want to say that, they can say that, and the people in this thread (including me, FWIW) would sigh with casual acceptance; but, instead, they make the argument that it is somehow better NOT to have the lidar, as they supposedly are now (as opposed to a while back?...) claiming that it is so difficult to "fuse" the knowledge of the various sensors that you are better off picking only one.


sure, but I think Musk has said it multiple times as well.




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