Tesla chief executive Elon Musk doubled down on his rejection of LiDAR sensors in reaction to a new interview from Uber’s CEO, where he defended the technology as crucial for safety.
Uber’s chief Dara Khosrowshahi said that “autonomous vehicles have to have super human levels of safety” and need to be “multiple times better than humans.”
“I think, in the near term, it’s going to be very difficult — and Elon would tell me I’m wrong […] to build a camera-only product that has superhuman levels of safety,” Khosrowshahi said.
As prices for LiDAR decreased over the last few years, Khosrowshahi sees its integration as valuable noting that all Uber partners — including Waymo — are using the technology.
“At some point will it be possible? Quite possible yes. But if you can have instrumentation that includes cameras and LiDAR. Solid state LiDAR now is $400-$500. Why not include LiDAR as well in order to achieve super human safety?”
He added: “All of our partners […] are using a combination of camera, radar and LiDAR, and I personally think that’s the right solution, but I could be proven wrong.”
Waymo earlier this year integrated its service into Uber’s app in Austin and has begun pilot rides in Atlanta, with broader launches in Miami and Washington D.C. planned for next year.
Musk responded by reiterating Tesla’s strategy of relying solely on cameras, arguing that additional sensors create conflicts rather than improvements.
“Lidar and radar reduce safety due to sensor contention,” he wrote on X. “If lidars/radars disagree with cameras, which one wins?
“This sensor ambiguity causes increased, not decreased, risk. That’s why Waymos can’t drive on highways. We turned off the radars in Teslas to increase safety. Cameras ftw [for the win],” he added.
On Tesla’s first-quarter earnings call, Musk joked that “the issue with Waymo’s cars is it costs Way-mo money.”
Tesla’s chief has dismissed its use of expensive sensors, arguing: “Waymo decided that an expensive sensor suite is the way to go, even though Google is very good at AI. I don’t see anyone being able to compete with Tesla at present.”
Waymo, the Alphabet subsidiary, has long taken the opposite view. Its co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana told CNBC in May that the firm is “the only company that, starting October of 2020, removed the driver” from its vehicles.
Waymo One, the company’s fully autonomous ride-hailing service, uses adapted Jaguar I-Pace vehicles fitted with LiDAR and high-definition maps, with remote assistance in place.
Asked whether Tesla was prioritising cost over safety, she said: “It’s less of a focus on them and more of a focus on what we’ve learned. There’s probably a lot of ways it can be done, but we’ve been doing it 24 hours a day for almost five years and it’s really important to focus on safety, not on safety and then cost, not cost and then safety.”
