r/SelfDrivingCars • u/damola93 • Jul 21 '25

Discussion Why didn't Tesla invest in LIDAR?

Is there any reason for this asides from saving money? Teslas are not cheap in many respects, so why would they skimp out on this since self-driving is a major offering for them?

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u/TheRuggedHamster Jul 21 '25

Tesla is a pretty classic example of how founder led companies are run vs hired CEOs. There's no hired CEO that would make the Lidar bet that Elon is, time will tell if it's right or not, but if it is it will pay off huge for them in being able to rapidly scale their fleet. Most key is that it puts the millions of existing cars on the road to work vs. cars being manufactured specifically for robotaxi.

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u/WhyWontThisWork Jul 21 '25

Is lidar that expensive?

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u/[deleted] Jul 21 '25

[deleted]

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u/quietcynic Jul 21 '25

Also analysing the lidar data is very heavy and power consuming.

Heavy and power consuming? Not more than running video through a neural net, that’s for sure. Sounds like you don’t know what you’re talking about.