Any company adding fancy hardware (beyond good cameras and inference chips) to achieve self driving is on the wrong track at this point. Software is what will win this game.
Of course, Waymo has achieved good results with A LOT of fancy hardware. But it's hard to see how they stand a chance against Cybercab mass production (probably behind schedule, but eventually).
I think Rivian has the best-looking line of EVs out there. Maybe they will be able to come from behind in self-driving tech. But this big reveal is not that promising, IMO.
The "fancy" hardware is going to get dirt cheap, and in a game where you're asking your customer to trust you with their lives, reliability is going to win. Combine that with time to market, and Tesla feels like a pretty clear "risky bet" at best... Maybe they make it work, but they have to do it before the other companies make lidar cheap, and prices have fallen dramatically over the past 10 years, for much better hardware.
Yeah, that is all reasonable. I think the jury is still out on if sensor fusion can really get far enough up the march of nines (will it work in 99.99 percent of scenarios)? Karpathy has given some good interviews about why Tesla ditched the sensor fusion approach and switched to vision-only.
Same can be said for vision-only, of course. Maybe it won't every quite get to 99.99.
Of course, Waymo has achieved good results with A LOT of fancy hardware. But it's hard to see how they stand a chance against Cybercab mass production (probably behind schedule, but eventually).
I think Rivian has the best-looking line of EVs out there. Maybe they will be able to come from behind in self-driving tech. But this big reveal is not that promising, IMO.