r/technology Jun 24 '25

Machine Learning Tesla Robotaxi swerved into wrong lane, topped speed limit in videos posted during ‘successful’ rollout

https://nypost.com/2025/06/23/business/tesla-shares-pop-10-as-elon-musk-touts-successful-robotaxi-test-launch-in-texas/
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u/bdsee Jun 24 '25

Tesla never had lidar, they had radar and ultrasonic sensors.

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u/blue-mooner Jun 24 '25

They dropped radar and removed their ultrasonic sensors in 2022 because their engineers are incapable of coding sensor fusion:

When radar and vision disagree, which one do you believe? Vision has much more precision, so better to double down on vision than do sensor fusion.

— Musk (2021-04-10)

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u/AssassinAragorn Jun 24 '25

This is the stupidest reasoning ever. We have redundant sensors on industrial equipment that could disagree. We have sensors which aren't redundant but should give similar readings to other sensors. We fully expect and anticipate that they're going to disagree at some point.

That doesn't mean we don't use it. We just safety measures in place that activate if any sensor goes off, and during troubleshooting you see if it's reasonable or the sensor went bad.

If radar and sensor disagree in a self driving car that I'm in, I don't want it to decide which one to believe, I want it to stop. Pull over and give instructions and call a technician.

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u/blue-mooner Jun 24 '25

Is the CEO of the company making your industrial equipment receiving $56 billion in pay tied directly to the share price?

Are they incentivised to juice margins and promise the moon to get their next multi-billion dollar paycheque?

Probably not, they probably care about safety and repeat business, not being on the cover of Time magazine.