What a world we’re living in!

Observing a technical deficiency in a robotics platform requires political considerations. Even when a car drives into a fucking wall at 40MPH on camera, people are asking about the camera man’s political party affiliation and not what’s wrong with the car.

Wild!

Back when Elon made avoiding LiDAR a core part of his professional personality, it was fairly expensive. But as any tech genius can tell ya, component prices drop rapidly for electronics.

Now, radar is dirty cheap. Everything has radar. Radar was removed from Teslas. A radar sensor for my truck is $75, probably much less at scale orders.

LiDAR sensors cost anywhere from $500-$1,500 for a vehicle of this type, near as I can tell (this type being Level 2 autonomy rather than something like a Waymo. A well-kitted out self-driving vehicle has 4 LiDAR sensors).

Here is the LiDAR module currently used on the Mercedes S-Class, it’s $400 used: https://www.ebay.com/itm/285816360464

It’s a hideously small cost-savings in 2025 for a luxury vehicle like a Tesla. Any rational company would’ve reversed course after the first stationary-object-strike fatality. Tesla is not a rational company.

Someone else had an interesting take elsewhere on the thread, and that got me looking.

Here is that mural you’re looking for, it’s in South Carolina, took me like 60 seconds of searching to find one so I am sure there are others: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/tunnelvision

o p t i m u s

Y’all excused, don’t sweat it! I sure did write the article you did not read. No worries, reading bores me sometimes, too.

Your take is one of the sillier opinions that I’ve come across in a minute. I won’t waste any more time explaining it to you than that. The test does not strike informed individuals as pointless.

Who downvoted this? XD This brings me joy

Haha, oncoming train? You’d be lucky to avoid a slow-rolling freight train at a clearly lit crossing in a Tesla using FSD.

Case in point:

https://youtu.be/h4f-crzpZ9w?t=11

“If you’re hearing this, you are the MEEP MEEP!”

EPA is going to investigate him for criminal fraud on Monday, I reckon.

It’s dirt cheap, too. If this was a cost-cutting measure, it was a thoroughly idiotic one. Which feels like the mark… of a certain someone I can think of

He is studiously apolitical, the only political comment I could find from him was the very sensible advice that we need to tone down our hyperpartisanship :)

https://x.com/MarkRober/status/1641487680168153089?lang=en

For me, I criticize any vehicle that is objectively crappy… and some vehicles where I find them subjectively crappy… and I hope folks don’t assume I’m doing that because of my political leanings.

I did low-key get the squiggles before writing the article. I thought, from an ethical hacking disclosure-type perspective, that this info might cause folks to… well, ya know, paint tunnels on walls.

Then I looked, the cat was already out of the bag, the video had something like 5 million views on it in the 4 hours it took me to draft the article. So I shared it, but I definitely did have that thought cross my mind. I am also a little worried on that score.

So, your comment got me thinking… surely, in a big country like the US of A, this mural must actually exist already, right?

Of course it does. It is an art piece in Columbia, S.C: https://img.atlasobscura.com/90srIbBi-XX-H9u6i_RykKIinRXlpclCHtk-QPSHixk/rt:fit/w:1200/q:80/sm:1/scp:1/ar:1/aHR0cHM6Ly9hdGxh/cy1kZXYuczMuYW1h/em9uYXdzLmNvbS91/cGxvYWRzL3BsYWNl/X2ltYWdlcy85ZTUw/M2ZkZDAxZjVhN2Rm/NmVfOTIyNjQ4NjQ0/OF80YWVhNzFkZjY0/X3ouanBn.webp

A full article about it: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/tunnelvision

How would Tesla FSD react to Tunnelvision, I wonder? How would Tesla FSD react to an overturned semi truck with a realistic depiction of a highway on it? JK, Tesla FSD crashes directly into overturned semis even without the image depiction issue.

I don’t think the test is misleading. It’s puffed up for entertainment purposes, but in being puffed up, it draws attention to an important drawback of optical-only self-driving cars, which is otherwise a difficult and arcane topic to draw everyday people’s attention to.

I am fairly dumb. Like, I am both dumb and I am fair-handed.

But, I am not pretentious!

So, let’s talk about your points and the title. You said I had fairly dumb pretenses, let’s talk through those.

1. The title of the article… there is no obvious reason to think that I think computers think like humans, certainly not from that headline. Why do you think that?
2. There are absolutely realistic situations exactly like this, not a pretense. Don’t think Loony Tunes. Think 18 wheeler with a realistic photo of a highway depicted on the side, or a billboard with the same. The academic article where 3 PhD holding engineering types discuss the issue at length, which is linked in my article. This is accepted by peer-reviewed science and has been for years.
3. Yes, I agree. That’s not a pretense, that’s just… a factually correct observation. You can’t train an AI to avoid optical illusions if its only sensor input is optical. That’s why the Tesla choice to skip LiDAR and remove radar is a terminal case of the stupids. They’ve invested in a dead-end sensor suite, as evidenced by their earning the title of Most Lethal Car Brand on the Road.

This does just impact Teslas, because they do not use LiDAR. To my knowledge, they are the only popular ADAS in the American market that would be fooled by a test like this.

Near as I can tell, you’re basically wrong point by point here.

The radar module on my truck costs $70.

The richest man on earth doesn’t think the lives of your vehicle’s passengers are worth $17.50 a pop.

And that’s to a knuckledragger like me, buying a single radar unit online. I’m sure the manufacturer gets insane quantity discounts.

They really had me in the first half, not gonna lie

They tested a LiDAR rigged car, and it stopped just like you predicted. As of 2021, Tesla uses only cameras for FSD, and not even radar (which my stupid fine Toyota truck has).

They tested the idea safely by building the wall out of styrofoam, or at least that’s what it looks like when it blows apart :)

Aw come on, I thought the lasers versus watermelons demo was a lot of fun, and if that isn’t mad science, I don’t know what is