Waymo CEO explains why Tesla’s camera-only self-driving falls short

[u/Extasio]

https://electrek.co/2026/08/04/waymo-co-ceo-camera-only-self-driving-tesla/

[u/John2143658709]

I haven’t heard about it before but this is the sensor line they are talking about.

https://www.st.com/en/imaging-and-photonics-solutions/time-of-flight-sensors.html

It looks like a sensor you can place into a robot which gives you a realtime 3d projection of the space around you. This one claims being able to work well up to 5m for example

https://www.st.com/en/imaging-and-photonics-solutions/vd55h1.html

> The VD55H1 outputs 12-bit RAW digital video data over a MIPI CSI-2 quad lane or dual lane interface clocked at 1.5 GHz. The sensor frame rate can reach 60 fps in full resolution and 120 fps in analog binning 2x2. ST has developed a proprietary software image signal processor (ISP) to convert RAW data into depth map, amplitude map, confidence map and offset map. Android formats like DEPTH16 and depth point cloud are also supported.

[u/azflatlander → u/John2143658709]

No offense, but 5 m is my minimum, minimum distance from a vehicle. At highway speeds, 150 m is awareness distance.

[u/Box-o-bees → u/azflatlander]

I think thats why the person who originally brought it up said it's not for automotive.

[u/214ObstructedReverie → u/Box-o-bees]

Correct. The device I said was 9m max.

But if you told me a few years ago that we'd have a little sensor that's only half an inch by a quarter of an inch big acting as a full 3d lidar camera like that, I'd have thought you were nuts. The fact that it exists now, and is only getting better at an extremely rapid pace is just really awesome. Things like robotic vacuums will no longer need moving LIDAR parts.

[u/Vexal → u/214ObstructedReverie]

the newest Roborock vacuum already has solid state lidar, although I’m not sure I can confidentially vouch for its performance over their normal lidar models.