The history of technology is pretty much directly opposed to your wishes.
The prosperity of technology basically solves the problem with the most terrible hardware possible.
For example, if you have a really good microprocessor that works, what you should do is shrink it until it barely works or speed it up until it barely works to get a similar version for cheaper or faster version for the same price.
Same goes with cars. If you have a car that works with ultrasonic and lidar and cameras, eliminate the expensive sensors and reduce the cost.
Reducing the cost will let more people afford the cars, and sell more cars.
To Musk that is basically his plan all along - to replace ICE cars with EVs. Just wish we could keep turn signal/wiper/headlight stalks.
It does in certain strictly determined conditions + human assistance.
But the point Tesla didn't go through "FSD with ultrasonic + lidar + cameras", and then start to reduce the sensors. They went from "no FSD" to "broken non-working FSD, but now only with cameras". That is not how you strip down a working product to reduce costs.
Waymo has sensors but they don't sense purely in real-time. Meaning the roads are mapped out in detail ahead of time. This is fine and effective, but it makes the comparison not really fair. A human driver will do splendidly in an area they've never been before, whereas a Waymo taxi won't.
I have an idea, replace the existing cameras with early 2000s era webcams. Since worse technology solves problems, it would work better.
If Musk had gone all-in on every sensor possible and put them all over the cars like strings of Christmas lights, I assume you would be defending that decision with just as much fervor.
Perhaps the worst hardware that can solve FSD is hundreds of sensors of all types plus a fleet of attached drones for other angles. The worst thing that could work is different from the worst thing.
They shrink their chips, they up their clock speeds and keep the costs the same.
They also remove hardware - they've relentlessly removed ports, intermediate interfaces (like removable batteries, memory and processor sockets) and changed screws into glue.
> you have a really good microprocessor that works,
and applying this analogy to the current situation: do we?
normally you have to sell a product that works first, take the profits and then invest that into improving the components to make more profits. I think Elon has cracked the code: sell the product you don't have to people who would love to have it, and you don't even need to produce a version 1 that works - just move on to solving the problems that you want to. the market will pay you either way.
The prosperity of technology basically solves the problem with the most terrible hardware possible.
For example, if you have a really good microprocessor that works, what you should do is shrink it until it barely works or speed it up until it barely works to get a similar version for cheaper or faster version for the same price.
Same goes with cars. If you have a car that works with ultrasonic and lidar and cameras, eliminate the expensive sensors and reduce the cost.
Reducing the cost will let more people afford the cars, and sell more cars.
To Musk that is basically his plan all along - to replace ICE cars with EVs. Just wish we could keep turn signal/wiper/headlight stalks.