Chris Urmson defends lidar as essential for autonomous vehicles, not a crutch. He argues the full sensor mix of lidar, cameras, and radar provides robustness needed to save lives. With 37,000 U.S. traffic deaths annually, he prioritizes deployment speed over minimizing sensor costs.
You said lidar came into the game early on and it's really the primary driver of autonomous vehicles today as a sensor. So how important is the role of lidar in the sensor suite in the near term?
So I think it's essential, but I also believe the cameras are essential and I believe the radar is essential. I think that you really need to use the composition of data from these different sensors if you want the thing to really be robust.
The question I want to ask, let's see if we can untangle it, is what are your thoughts on the Elon Musk provocative statement that lidar is a crutch? That is a kind of, I guess, growing pains and that much of the perception task can be done with cameras.
So I think it is undeniable that people walk around without lasers in their foreheads and they can get into vehicles and drive them. And so there's an existence proof that you can drive using passive vision, no doubt. Can't argue with that.
In terms of sensors.
Yeah, in terms of sensors, Right. There's an example that we all go do it, many of us every day. In terms of lidar being a crutch, sure. But in the same way that the combustion engine was a crutch on the path to an electric vehicle, in the same way that any technology ultimately gets replaced by some superior technology in the future, really the way that I look at this is that the way we get around on the ground, the way that we use transportation is broken and that we have this, I think the number I saw this morning, 37,000Americans killed last year on our roads. And that's just not acceptable. And so any technology that we can bring to bear that accelerates this self driving technology coming to market and saving lives is technology we should be using. And it feels just arbitrary to say, well, I'm not okay with using lasers because that's whatever, but I am okay with using an 8 megapixel camera or a 16 megapixel camera. These are just bits of technology and we should be taking the best technology from the tool bin that allows us to go and solve a problem.
The question I often talk to, well obviously you do as well too, sort of automotive companies. And you know, if there's one word that comes up more often than anything, it's cost. And, and trying to drive costs down. So while it's, it's true that it's, it's a tragic number, the 37,000, the, the question is what? And I'm not the one asking this question because I Hate this question, but yeah, we have. We want to find the cheapest sensor suite that creates a safe vehicle. So in that uncomfortable trade off, do you foresee lidar coming down in cost in the future or do you see a day where level 4 autonomy is possible without LiDAR?
I see both of those, but it's really a matter of time. And I think really maybe I would talk to the question you asked about the cheapest sensor. I don't think that's actually what you want. What you want is a sensor suite that is economically viable. Then after that, everything is about margin and driving cost out of the system. What you also want is a sensor suite that works. It's great to tell a story about how it'd be better to have a self driving system with a $50 sensor instead of a $500 sensor. But if the $500 sensor makes it work and the $50 sensor doesn't work, who cares? So long as you can actually have an economic. There's an economic opportunity there. And the economic opportunity is important because that's how you actually have a sustainable business and that's how you can actually see this come to scale and be out in the world. And so when I look at lidar, I see a technology that has no underlying fundamental expense to it. It's going to be more expensive than an imager because CMOS processes or FAT processes are dramatically more scalable than mechanical processes. But we still should be able to drive cost down substantially on that side. And then I also do think that with the right business model, you can absorb more, certainly more cost on the bill of materials.
Yeah, if the census suite works, extra value is provided. Thereby you don't need to drive costs down to zero. It's basic economics. Sa.
