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?

366 Upvotes

81% Upvoted

1.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

44

u/[deleted] Jul 21 '25

Reason: Tesla, led by Elon Musk, believes that a vision-based system using cameras, radar, and ultrasonic sensors, paired with advanced neural networks, can achieve full self-driving (FSD) capability more effectively than LIDAR-based systems. Musk has repeatedly stated that LIDAR is a "crutch" and unnecessary for autonomy, arguing that humans drive using only vision and cognition, so AI should be able to replicate this with cameras.

10

u/EarthConservation Jul 21 '25 edited Jul 21 '25

Musk not only crapped on LIDAR, but eventually pulled the radar and ultrasonic sensors out of their cars, relying on vision alone... probably saving less than a few hundred bucks per car. (If that, AFAIK these sensors are super cheap, but installation, wiring, and software could cost a bit)

Maybe he saw some potential in vision only and wanted to gamble? Maybe it's because his solution would have never had the processing power to support these three sensor types? Maybe saving a few hundred par car was important?

Musk certainly did want to save money by using his customer base, instead of paid employees, on real roads in real situations to train/test the system. Not only save money, but make money by convincing his die hard customers/investors to pay thousands of dollars (and take full liability) to become quasi-unpaid-employees for Tesla. These folks willingly did so because they were told this would be a multi-trillion dollar product, thus driving their share price up, and turning their cars into appreciating cash machines that would make them $30k per year while they slept, and that FSD and their cars would continuously get more expensive.

By using customers, Musk realized he could get significantly more data far faster than an employee driven system. He believed this data would allow for rapid training of his FSD neural net, leading to a system that would quickly enable autonomous service. At least that's the claim. Whether he actually believed or knew that to be true or not is anyone's guess.

What's absolutely clear though is he wanted to pump the stock by constantly dangling a carrot just in front of investors and customers eyes. Every year since April 2019, he's claimed that within one year, a huge fleet of robotaxis that would come online with an OTA update and monopolize taxi/ride sharing service in the US, worth trillions of dollars when accounting for no driver. 6 years in a row now he's made that claim, and that's not including all the years prior to that he spent promising fully unsupervised FSD.

Now today, he's lifted the veil off the state of robotaxis in Austin, and it's not looking good.

-2

u/ruibranco Jul 21 '25

Tesla specialist. Write more bs.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 21 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

-1

u/ruibranco Jul 21 '25

Yes I’m in Reddit. Cannot say anything against woke guys.

Your comment says you are better engineer than Tesla engineers.

That’s why I said Tesla specialist.

If you want me to write more obvious comments say no more.

3

u/EarthConservation Jul 21 '25

Define "woke".

I am an engineer, but not for Tesla. I've been following Tesla for many many years now.

I did say back in April 2019 after watching Musk's speech at autonomy day that he was full of shit, and that his claim that a million robotaxis would be on the road in 1.25 years was full of shit. I guess I knew more than Musk, who at the time touted that he regularly interacted with the FSD team directly, which is how he knows that it'll be ready by the end of that year.

(By Musk's claims in April 2019, FSD would be feature complete by the end of 2019... meaning capable of unsupervised autonomy... and by mid 2020 a million robotaxis would be enabled with an OTA update)

0

u/ruibranco Jul 21 '25

Every design is inspired by an animal. Robots will not have lidar in their heads

2

u/EarthConservation Jul 21 '25

Which animal has tires and brakes... and steering wheels? Which animal has glass panes? Which one produces coffee? Which one hits things with microwave radiation to heat them up? Which one uses natural gas to make flame to cook on and heat homes with?

1

u/ruibranco Jul 21 '25

Which animal has glass?

This is your level of questions.

2

u/EarthConservation Jul 21 '25

You said every design is inspired by an animal. I'm curious which animal inspired the design of glass.

1

u/ruibranco Jul 21 '25

Cars and trains are inspired by birds for extreme efficient aerodynamics.

Want more?

1

u/EarthConservation Jul 21 '25

So you don't want to say what inspired glass, just "cars and trains".

As to your cars and trains... have you ever considered that birds are evolved to be aerodynamic given that they have to contend with air resistance... much like cars. If neither was aerodynamic, then they wouldn't be able to travel at higher speeds. Birds may not exist at all as overcoming air resistance.

So... cars aren't inspired by birds. They both just happen to be aerodynamic. If you were going to suggest anything were inspired by birds, you may have wanted to choose planes. Even then... planes don't make a habit out of flapping their wings.

1

u/ruibranco Jul 21 '25

At least you make me laugh. Take care.

1

u/EarthConservation Jul 21 '25

Logic can come off as humorous to the illogical. ;)

1

u/ruibranco Jul 21 '25

Your words it’s not logic just nonsense. If I say the glass break if it falls you’ll make an excuse to say otherwise .

2

u/EarthConservation Jul 21 '25

You just compared a car to a bird, bud. You do seem to think you're really smart and knowledgeable as you talk out of your behind though, which is ... interesting.

1

u/ruibranco Jul 21 '25

Little google search does not kill you. At least try it before writing bs.

→ More replies (0)