llm/c952dc1c-1500-4426-8823-61ab4a37cd1c/batch-1-934c676b-ad27-4eb3-942b-dad0a8b985c8-input.json
The following is content for you to classify. Do not respond to the comments—classify them.
<topics>
1. Tesla vs Waymo Approach
Related: Debate over vision-only versus multi-sensor approaches, Tesla's decision to not use lidar, comparisons of safety records, discussion of whether Tesla can catch up to Waymo's technology lead
2. Lidar Necessity Debate
Related: Arguments for and against lidar in autonomous vehicles, claims that cameras alone are insufficient, examples of accidents avoided due to lidar, cost considerations for sensor suites
3. Sensor Fusion Benefits
Related: Technical discussion of combining multiple sensor types, resolving ambiguity between sensors, achieving redundancy, how different sensors complement each other's weaknesses
4. Elon Musk Criticism
Related: Skepticism about Musk's technical claims, accusations of lying to investors, debate over his engineering competence versus business acumen, discussion of his influence on Tesla's technical direction
5. GM and Cruise Failure
Related: Former employees expressing confusion over GM abandoning Cruise, discussion of corporate culture issues, speculation about why GM pulled funding just as technology was improving
6. Human Driving Limitations
Related: Comparisons between human senses and autonomous vehicle sensors, debate over whether humans use only vision to drive, discussion of hearing, touch, and inner ear in driving
7. Broader Robotics Applications
Related: Suggestions that Waymo's perception technology could benefit factory robots, home robots, space applications, and various mobility solutions beyond traditional cars
8. Alternative Vehicle Forms
Related: Ideas for autonomous golf carts, tuktuks, bicycle carriers, low-speed electric vehicles for last-mile transportation at train stations
9. Market Dynamics and Valuation
Related: Discussion of Tesla's high valuation versus actual performance, comparisons with Toyota's P/E ratio, winner-take-all characteristics of ride-hailing markets
10. FSD Real-World Experience
Related: Personal anecdotes about Tesla FSD performance, both positive experiences of hands-free driving and negative experiences with scary incidents at high speeds
11. Urban Walkability Concerns
Related: Worry that autonomous vehicles will damage walkable urban areas, arguments that self-driving cars will increase car usage and harm city design
12. Safety and Accountability
Related: Discussion of accidents caused by autonomous vehicles, Tesla autopilot deaths, Cruise hiding dragging incident, questions about who bears responsibility
13. Weather Performance
Related: How different sensor types perform in rain, snow, fog, and other adverse conditions, claims about Tesla's photon counting capabilities being false
14. Business Model Viability
Related: Questions about whether robotaxi services will be profitable, comparisons to taxi industry valuations, discussion of competition and market size
15. Tesla Cult Mentality
Related: Observations about Tesla owners defending the company's decisions, cognitive dissonance about FSD capabilities, reluctance to admit their cars won't achieve full autonomy
16. Infrastructure and Regulation
Related: Discussion of US versus China approaches to autonomous vehicle infrastructure, state competition for AV companies, potential for regulations favoring conservative approaches
17. Cost Reduction Progress
Related: Industry-wide lidar cost reductions, Tesla's strategy to minimize hardware costs, Waymo achieving better performance with fewer cameras
18. Corporate Decision Making
Related: GM's short-term thinking, comparison to EV1 abandonment, discussion of why established automakers struggle with long-term technology investments
19. National Security Implications
Related: Arguments that countries will prevent foreign AV companies from dominating their markets, ensuring multiple competitors survive globally
20. Cyclist Safety Perspective
Related: Hope that autonomous vehicles will make roads safer for cyclists by eliminating distracted driving, removing human error from the equation
0. Does not fit well in any category
</topics>
<comments_to_classify>
[
{
"id": "46996178",
"text": "I bought mine with cameras and a radar, which they then deprecated and left an unused. Even though autopilot was better when it had radar. Then I realized that this thing would never be self-driving and that its CEO was throwing nazi salutes. Cut my losses and got rid of it. Gotta admit defeat sometimes."
}
,
{
"id": "46995373",
"text": "Add a tow hitch to Waymos and any car can be autonomous!"
}
,
{
"id": "46994884",
"text": "Do Tesla fans think that? I've seen plenty of Tesla fans say that lidar is unnecessary (which I tend to agree with), but never that lidar is actively detrimental as Musk says there."
}
,
{
"id": "46995104",
"text": "I mean, humans have only their eyes. And most of them intentionally distract themselves while driving by listening to music, podcasts, playing with their phones, or eating."
}
,
{
"id": "46995303",
"text": "I get your point about camera vs lidar. Humans do have other senses in play while driving though. We have touch/vibration (feeling the road surface texture), hearing, proprioception / acceleration sense, etc. These are all involved for me when I drive a car."
}
,
{
"id": "46995788",
"text": "To be fair, humans are fairly poor drivers and generally can't be trusted to drive millions of miles safely."
}
,
{
"id": "46996587",
"text": "Actually humans are fairly good drivers. The average US driver goes almost 2 million miles between causing injury collisions. Take the drunks and drug users out and the numbers for humans look even better."
}
,
{
"id": "46996862",
"text": "Incorrect. Humans are fairly good engineers, so cars are pretty safe nowadays.\n\nIf you include minor fender-benders and unreported incidents, estimates drop to around 100,000–200,000 miles between any collision event.\n\nThis is cataclysmically bad for a designed system, which is why targets are super-human, not human."
}
,
{
"id": "46992991",
"text": "Personally as much as people like to dunk on Musk, he did build several successful companies in extremely challenging domains, and he probably listens to the world-leading domain experts in his employ.\n\nSo while he might turn out to be wrong, I don't think his opininon is uninformed."
}
,
{
"id": "46993183",
"text": "I fully agree with your first point: Musk has shown tremendous ability to manage companies to become unicorns. He's clearly skilled in this domain.\n\nHowever, if you think about this for 2 seconds with even a rudimentary understanding of sensor fusion, more hardware is always better (ofc with diminishing marginal value).\n\nBut ~10y ago, when Tesla was in a financial pinch, Musk decided to scrap as much hardware as possible to save on operational cost and complexity. The argument about \"humans can drive with vision only, so self-driving should be able to as well\" served as the excuse to shareholders."
}
,
{
"id": "46994102",
"text": "What doesn’t make sense to me is that the cameras are no where as good as human eyes. The dynamic range sucks, it doesn’t put down a visor or where sunglasses to deal with beaming light, resolution is much worse, etc. why not invest in the cameras themselves if this is your claim?"
}
,
{
"id": "46994918",
"text": "Especially the part where the cameras do not meet minimum vision requirements [1] in many states where it operates such as California and Texas.\n\n[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43605034"
}
,
{
"id": "46994290",
"text": "I always see this argument but from experience I don't buy it. FSD and its cameras work fine driving with the sun directly in front of the car. When driving manually I need the visor so far down I can only see the bottom of the car in front of me.\n\nThe cameras on Teslas only really lose visibility when dirty. Especially in winter when there's salt everywhere. Only the very latest models (2025+?) have decent self-cleaning for the cameras that get very dirty."
}
,
{
"id": "46995207",
"text": "FSD doesn't \"work fine\" driving directly into the sun. There are loads of YT videos that demonstrate this."
}
,
{
"id": "46996842",
"text": "For which car? The older the car (hardware) version the worse it is. I've never had any front camera blinding issues with a 2022 car (HW3).\n\nThe thing to remember about cameras is what you see in an image/display is not what the camera sees. Processing the image reduces the dynamic range but FSD could work off of the raw sensor data."
}
,
{
"id": "46993753",
"text": "And to some extent, I also drive with my ears, not only with 2 eyes. I often can ear a car driving on the blind spot. Not saying that I do need to ear in order to drive, but the extra sensor is welcome when it can helps.\n\nThere is an argument for sure, about how many sensors is enough / too much. And maybe 8 cameras around the car is enough to surpass human driving ability.\n\nI guess it depends on how far/secure we want the self-driving to be. If only we had a comprehensive driving test that all (humans and robots) could take and be ranked... each country lawmakers could set the bar based on the test."
}
,
{
"id": "46996428",
"text": "Nuanced point: Even if vision alone were sufficient to drive, adding sensors to the cars today could speed up development. Tesla‘s world model could be improved, speeding up development of the vision only model that is truly autonomous."
}
,
{
"id": "46996343",
"text": "The other day I slammed the brakes at a green light, because I could hear sirens approaching -- even though the buildings on the corner prevented any view of the approaching fire trucks or their flashing lights. Do Teslas not have this ability?"
}
,
{
"id": "46996445",
"text": "I don‘t know whether Tesla‘s self-driving mode could do that.\n\nHowever, notice that deaf people are allowed to drive, ie. you are not expected to be able to have full hearing to be allowed on the road."
}
,
{
"id": "46995205",
"text": "I think his companies succeeded despite Elon. Tesla should be a $5T company and he fucked it up."
}
,
{
"id": "46996460",
"text": "Stongly disagree. I don‘t like the fella but thinking that he founds and successfully manages SpaceX and Tesla to their market value _by chance_ is ridiculous."
}
,
{
"id": "46994303",
"text": "> I fully agree with your first point: Musk has shown tremendous ability to manage companies to become unicorns. He's clearly skilled in this domain.\n\nI would firmly disagree with that.\n\nWhat Musk has done is bring money to develop technologies that were generally considered possible, but were being ignored by industry incumbents because they were long-term development projects that would not be profitable for years. When he brings money to good engineers and lets them do their thing, pretty good things happen. The Tesla Roadster, Model S, Falcon 9, Starlink, etc.\n\nThe problem with him is he's convinced that he is also a good engineer, and not only that but he's better than anyone that works for him, and that has definitively been proven wrong. The more he takes charge, the worse it gets. The Model X's stupid doors, all the factory insanity, the outdoor paint tent, etc. Model 3 and Model Y arguably succeeded in spite of his interference, but the Dumpstertruck was his baby and we can all see how that has basically only sold to people who want to associate themselves closely with his politics because it's objectively bad at everything else. The constant claims that Tesla cars will drive themselves, the absolute bullshit that is calling it \"Full Self Driving\", the hilarious claims of humanoid robots being useful, etc. How are those solar roofs coming? Have you heard of anyone installing a Powerwall recently? Heard anything about Roadster 2.0 since he went off claiming it would be able to fly? A bunch of Canadian truckers have built their own hybrid logging trucks from scratch in the time since Tesla started taking money for their semis and we still haven't seen the Tesla trucks haul more than a bunch of bags of chips.\n\nThe more Musk is personally involved with a project the worse it is. The man is useful for two things: Providing capital and blatantly lying to hype investors.\n\nIf he had stuck to the first one the world as a whole would be a better place, Tesla would probably be in a much better position right now.\n\nSpaceX was for a long time considered to be further from his influence with Shotwell running the company well and Musk acting more as a spokesperson. Starship is sort of his Model X moment and the plans to merge in the AI business will IMO be the Cybertruck."
}
,
{
"id": "46996407",
"text": "You say that you disagree with my point, but then your first paragraph just restates my argument. And your subsequent paragraphs don‘t refer to my comment at all.\n\nI never claimed he‘s a good engineer, nor that he has high EQ, nor that he is honest, nor that he has sole responsibility for the success of his companies."
}
,
{
"id": "46996479",
"text": "Home batteries are being installed at insane rates in Australia at the moment. Very few of them are Powerwalls because Tesla have priced\nthemselves out of the market (and also Elon’s reputation is toast)."
}
,
{
"id": "46993141",
"text": "His autopilot has killed several people, sometimes the owner of the car, sometimes other drivers sharing the road. It is hard to root for this guy."
}
,
{
"id": "46996551",
"text": "> The fact that people still trust him on literally anything boggles my mind.\n\nLong-distance amateur psychology question: I wonder if he's convinced himself that he's a smart guy, after all he's got 12 digits in his net worth, \"How would that have been possible if I were an idiot?\".\n\nAnyway, ego protection is how people still defend things like the Maga regime, or the genocide; it's hard for someone to admit that they've been stupid enough to have been fooled to vote for \"Idi Amin in whiteface\" (term coined by Literature Nobel Prize winner Wole Soyinka), or that the \"nation's right to self-defense\" they've been defending was a thin excuse for mass murder of innocents."
}
,
{
"id": "46996741",
"text": "I've always wondered how people who are not 1/10th as smart as Elon convince themselves that he is not intelligent after solving robotics, AI, neuralink, and space all simultaneously."
}
,
{
"id": "46996955",
"text": "And what fraction Elon-Intelligence is needed to believe he actually invented/solved all that by himself?\n\nOr did I miss the sarcasm?"
}
,
{
"id": "46994942",
"text": "I certainly don't trust anything he says 100%.\n\nThis is - to me - entirely separate from the fact that his companies routinely revolutionize industries."
}
,
{
"id": "46996739",
"text": "Well, given that Elon openly lies on investor calls...\n\nOne of his latest, on the topic of rain/snow/mist/fog and handling with cameras:\n\n\"Well, we have made that a non-issue as we actually do photon counting in the cameras, which solves that problem.\"\n\nNo, Elon, you don't. For two reasons: reason one, part A, the types of cameras that do photon counting don't work well for normal 'vision'/imagery associated with cameras, and part B, are not actually present in your cars at all. And reason two, photon counting requires the camera being in an enclosed space to work, which cars on the road ... aren't.\n\nWhat Elon has mastered the art of is making statements that sound informed, pass the BS detector of laypeople, and optionally are also plausibly deniable if actually called out by an SME."
}
,
{
"id": "46992706",
"text": "If only there was a filter so we could fuse different sensor measurements into a better whole.."
}
,
{
"id": "46992339",
"text": "I don't thing it's purely stubbornness. Tesla sold the promise of software only updates resulting in FSD to hundreds of thousands of people. Not all of those people are in the cult of Tesla. I would expect admitting defeat at this point would result in a large class action lawsuit at the very least."
}
,
{
"id": "46992488",
"text": "It wouldn't keep them from equipping _new_ models with additional sensors, spinning a story around how this helps them train the camera-only AI, or whatever."
}
,
{
"id": "46995406",
"text": "I know it's \"illegal\" and technically sold as FSD (assisted), but just 2 days ago I was in a friend's Model Y and it drove from work to my house (both in San Jose) without any steering wheel or pedal touch, at all. And he told me he went to Palm Springs like that too.\n\nI shit on Tesla and Elon on any opportunity, and it's a shame they basically have the software out there doing things when it probably shouldn't, but I don't think they're that far behind Waymo where it really matters, which is the thing actually working."
}
,
{
"id": "46992370",
"text": "The terms of service probably require you to sue Tesla in that Texas district with his corrupt judge pal."
}
,
{
"id": "46992121",
"text": "Elon cult members still to this day will tell me that because humans only use vision to drive all a Tesla needs is simple cameras. Meanwhile, I've been driven by Waymo and Tesla FSD and Waymo is by far my pick for safety and comfort. I actually trusted the waymo I was in, while the Tesla I rode in we had 2 _very_ scary incidents at high speeds in a 1 hour drive."
}
,
{
"id": "46992389",
"text": "> humans only use vision to drive\n\nI love this argument because it is so obviously wrong: how could any self aware person seriously argue that hearing, touch, and the inner ear aren't involved in their driving?\n\nAs an adult I can actually afford a reliable car, so I will concede that smell is less relevant than it used to be, at least for me personally :)"
}
,
{
"id": "46992689",
"text": "> hearing, touch, and the inner ear aren't involved\n\nNot to mention possibly the most complex structure in the known universe, the human brain: 86 billion neurons, 100 trillion connections."
}
,
{
"id": "46994021",
"text": "Human inner ear is worse than a $3 IMU in your average smartphone in literally every way. And that IMU also has a magnetometer in it.\n\nBeating human sensors wasn't hard for over a decade now. The problem is that sensors are worthless. Self-driving lives and dies by AI - all the sensors need to be is \"good enough\"."
}
,
{
"id": "46996421",
"text": "Human hearing is excellent. Good directional perception and sensitivity.\nEyesight is the weakest sense. Poor color sensitivity, low light sensitivity, blindspot. The terrible natural design flaws are compensated by natural nystagmas and the brain filling in the blanks."
}
,
{
"id": "46995488",
"text": "> The problem is that sensors are worthless\n\nWell, in TFA the far more successful manufacturer of self driving cars is saying you're wrong. I think they're in much better position to know than you :)"
}
,
{
"id": "46992901",
"text": "1. in US you can get a driver's license if you're deaf so as a society we think you can drive without hearing\n\n2. since this is in context of Tesla: tesla cars do have microphones and FSD does use it for responding to sirens etc."
}
,
{
"id": "46993105",
"text": "(1) is true, but actually driving is definitely harder without hearing or with diminished hearing. And Several US states, including CA, prohibit inhibiting hearing while driving, e.g., by wearing a headset, earbuds, or earplugs."
}
,
{
"id": "46994937",
"text": "Involved? Yes. Necessary? Pretty sure no.\n\nIf it makes you happy, you can read \"only vision\" as \"no lidar or radar.\" Cars already have microphones and IMUs."
}
,
{
"id": "46992511",
"text": "I've long expected Waymo's approach to prevail simply because - aside from whether vision-only proves good enough to some standard - it will be easy to lobby for regulations that favor the more conservative approach.\n\nBut I also don't think we can take anything from what Waymo claims about the feasibility of vision-only."
}
,
{
"id": "46995422",
"text": "Waymo has posted videos of accidents they've avoided purely because their lidar picked up on a pedestrian before their cameras saw anything.\n\nA favorite of mine:\nhttps://x.com/dmitri_dolgov/status/1900219562437861685"
}
,
{
"id": "46996184",
"text": "They're very public about the data that makes them look good, but they went to court to keep their safety data from the public. ( https://techcrunch.com/2022/02/22/waymo-to-keep-robotaxi-saf... )"
}
,
{
"id": "46996808",
"text": "That lawsuit was about trade secrets shared with DMV. And DMV advised them to file a restraining order against a third party seeking redacted info."
}
,
{
"id": "46992948",
"text": "I think past experience shows that the US prefers a wait and see approach - owning in part I think to it federal structure, where states compete for companies good graces and money, so if State A bans something, State B will allow it and gain an advantage in that area."
}
,
{
"id": "46993003",
"text": "Moreover, why draw a hard line on vision only when there is existing technology is available to augment it? It's not like they have to develop 3 novel technologies."
}
]
</comments_to_classify>
Based on the comments above, assign each to up to 3 relevant topics.
Return ONLY a JSON array with this exact structure (no other text):
[
{
"id": "comment_id_1",
"topics": [
1,
3,
5
]
}
,
{
"id": "comment_id_2",
"topics": [
2
]
}
,
{
"id": "comment_id_3",
"topics": [
0
]
}
,
...
]
Rules:
- Each comment can have 0 to 3 topics
- Use 1-based topic indices for matches
- Use index 0 if the comment does not fit well in any category
- Only assign topics that are genuinely relevant to the comment
Remember: Output ONLY the JSON array, no other text.
50