Combination of cost savings and “first principles” thinking.
They tried to save $5 per car by not including a rain sensor. It’s a few million dollars in savings at their scale. At the same time, they spend time and resources engineering a “smart” solution to auto wipers using cameras. And they continue to spend effort on that because it still doesn’t work.
Obviously it's not the $5, but the research that matters. We are beta-testing their vision based rain detection algorithm for them, for free (in fact we are paying $5 to test it).
The weirdest part from the outside: reliably detecting it's raining should have obvious positive impact on the driving side as well. For instance to better interpret the tires slipping, or even anticipate worse precision from some of the sensors.
You do not want to start making handling adjustments based on rain on the windshield, when the road could already be slick from prior rainfall or other conditions.
I like this take a lot and think its spot on. It feels very much like one of those decisions within a startup where the team decides to build their own tool that does the same thing as an equivalent commercial offering and consider it cheaper without thinking about the time to develop, maintain and improve.
They tried to save $5 per car by not including a rain sensor. It’s a few million dollars in savings at their scale. At the same time, they spend time and resources engineering a “smart” solution to auto wipers using cameras. And they continue to spend effort on that because it still doesn’t work.
Penny wise, pound foolish.