Comment by cyberax
2 days ago
This is an estimation for the self-driving hardware cost (computers, LIDAR, sensors). It does not include the base car price, as it can be easily optimized down to almost nothing (sub $10k).
The price is somewhat of a guess, several years ago, the hardware in Waymo was priced at $130k by Munro&Associates. But since then the cost of the LIDAR sensors fell by 90% or so, reducing the main expense.
And Baidu has cars on the road that cost $30k for the _entire_ car. So presumably, so even a couple of pricier sensors won't affect the estimate too much.
> include the base car price, as it can be easily optimized down to almost nothing (sub $10k).
Waymo uses brand-new electric Jaguars.
Sure. Because why not? The cars are in the experimental stage, so they might as well use nice ones.
But there is no _reason_ to use Jaguars and not specially-built smaller and less powerful cars, when Waymo finally starts a real rollout.
Source? None of those numbers make sense.
> The price is somewhat of a guess, several years ago, the hardware in Waymo was priced at $130k by Munro&Associates
10 years ago they had even more sensors dotting the car, instead of one honeycomb on each corner they had 2, so I find $130k hard to believe given what we know about the sensor kit today.
> But since then the cost of the LIDAR sensors fell by 90% or so, reducing the main expense.
I do not know of any lidar that has done that, and Waymo makes their own and we know their price(-ish) (and quantity). I think they’ve actually gone up in price (but also capability - honeycomb 1 vs gen 2).