[MetaWhirledPeas]

> Tesla's choice to abandon lidar will be one of the biggest oof in business history.

Why? They have started unsupervised taxi rides in Austin. One of their goals was affordability, and their cars are massively more affordable.

[g947o]

You might want to look up the price of lidar in 2026 before talking about affordability.

[ddalex]

Dude, $26k Chinese cars come with lidar in the base configuration

[standardUser]

Every car is more affordable when you don't have to pay a human being to operate it. The difference in labor costs dwarfs the difference in vehicle costs.

[bluGill]

Most cars don't have a paid driver. Uber, taxis, and trucking is a tiny minority of drivers.

[ghaff]

It's been a while since I looked it up but I understand the human is about 50% of taxi operating costs. That's not trivial of course but it's also not dwarfing vehicle costs.