"LiDAR is still important" – Ford CEO criticizes Tesla's approach to autopilot and supports Waymo

Ford CEO Jim Farley said that using LiDAR technology is critical to creating a reliable autonomous driving system. Speaking at the Aspen Ideas Festival, he noted that Waymo's approach makes more sense for companies like Ford, Tech Radar reports.

"Where the camera will be completely blinded, the LiDAR system will see exactly what’s in front of you," Farley commented.

In his opinion, Waymo has made significant progress, while Tesla's approach is focused on making production cheaper. Ford, for its part, after the cancellation of the joint project Argo AI with Volkswagen, continues to develop its own system BlueCruise. It allows the driver to take his hands off the wheel on certain sections of the highway, while maintaining control of the vehicle.

Waymo’s sixth-generation system uses a combination of 13 cameras, 4 LiDAR, 6 radars, and a microphone array. This redundancy allows the system to operate stably even in challenging environments where one or more technologies may fail.

Tesla, by contrast, uses only eight cameras to provide a 360-degree view. Musk has been actively promoting a "visual" approach since 2019 and calls LiDAR "useless." The company recently launched a robotaxi service test in Austin, Texas. The test involves about 10 Tesla cars, each carrying passengers in the front seat under the supervision of a remote operator. The company also showed a video of its new Model Y electric car delivering itself to a customer completely autonomously.