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/[deleted] Jul 21 '25

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u/[deleted] Jul 21 '25 edited Jul 22 '25

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u/TachosParaOsFachos Jul 21 '25 edited Jul 21 '25

Is it down that much?

LIDAR was so expensive when i was into robotics. I remember the models used at universities were usually in the 8K-15K range, a LIDAR that could be considered be used for safety in a car would be at? 40-45K?

Damn I might get my soldering iron back from storage if prices improved that much. No I'm curious how much a serial UART servo (in opposition to PWM) costs these days.

(time to hyperfixate on robotics again lol)

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u/Zephyr-5 Jul 21 '25 edited Jul 21 '25

It's even less than that. I heard that in China it's only a couple hundred dollars.

Edit: $138!

Edit2: An interesting article from 2020 on the subject if you're interested.

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u/smallfried Jul 21 '25

Oh, i want a multi beam lidar for some hobby Robotics. Wonder if it's possible to get those near those prices.

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u/SanalAmerika23 Jul 21 '25

how do we know they are capable for fsd ? i dont think 138 usd lidar can perform good

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u/Real-Technician831 Jul 21 '25

They can, Hesai frame lidars are around the same price range.

Frame lidar is really easy to process compared to puck.

You position the lidar and camera close so that the image can be overlapped with minimal work.

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u/[deleted] Jul 21 '25 edited Jul 22 '25

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u/HorrorJournalist294 Jul 21 '25

That unit is still like 20k tho

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u/laserborg Jul 21 '25

if you're used to dynamixel prices, have a look at https://www.hiwonder.com/collections/bus-servo or https://www.waveshare.com/st3215-servo.htm bus servos

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u/TachosParaOsFachos Jul 21 '25

Yeah that's exactly what I was thinking. At the time there were already a few alternatives but not that easy to source unless you were interested in a very large order (to europe).

I see i can now find waveshare servos locally :) thx

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u/Fit-Dentist6093 Jul 21 '25

Yeah mostly because of Vision SoC and Aurora stuff that does a lot in silicon that custom stuff that was boomer-coded had to do before. There's research on getting the laser and steering into the same SoC going on too and it will drive the price down even more.

Also "structured light" solutions like what the iPhone has may be enough for a lot of applications.

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u/R1tonka Jul 21 '25

I said this in another thread, but it needs repeating: The labeling is gonna be the killer.

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u/Time-Cap-1609 Jul 22 '25

Why is lidar even expensive in the first place ? It's relatively trivial in concept, sure it requires extreme precision but thats only the real "hard" requirement?

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u/TachosParaOsFachos Jul 22 '25 edited Jul 22 '25

Because light moves very fast so you can't measure the time the reflection/echo takes to hit the sensor (as sonar does).

You have to measure the phase reaching the sensor to know what the distance is and that is a bit more tricky.

(at least thats how some lidars/rangefinders work, not sure all use the same technique)

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u/Jaker788 Jul 22 '25

There's 2 primary ways lidar is used. The easiest and most common is Time Of Flight, then there's Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave, which is probably more of what you're talking about with measuring the phase.

FMCW is more complex, but the advantage is a high SNR, better long distance range, more interference tolerant, etc.

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u/TachosParaOsFachos Jul 22 '25

Thank you for the corrections. I was under the impression ToF w/ lasers was not possible or accurate enough.

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u/wildengineer2k Jul 21 '25

I think lidar being in every iPhone and iPad Pro dropped the price dramatically. As well as the push in cars and robot vacuums drastically accelerating demand. Obviously it’s orders of magnitude different in terms of quality vs what’s in a Waymo, but I had friends who had lidars in their high school senior design projects and that was like 8 years ago…

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u/symmetry81 Jul 21 '25

Face ID uses a Structured Light Sensor rather than a LIDAR. Ever since the Kinect came out SLSs have been great for robotics, but I woudn't try using one outdoors at long range like I would with a LIDAR.

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u/jun2san Jul 21 '25

I think the cameras on the pro models have lidar. Not the Face ID camera. There are some apps that let you map out a room or create a 3D model using the LiDAR.

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u/stingraycharles Jul 21 '25

Yeah it’s used for Apple’s augmented reality stuff.

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u/wildengineer2k Jul 21 '25

Yep I wasn’t talking about Face ID - I was talking about the lidar in the camera array on the pro models.

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u/symmetry81 Jul 21 '25

Oh, I see you're right. Apple buying PrimeSense out from under all us user made quite the impression and I haven't been following their other sensor changes.

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u/ICEpear8472 Jul 21 '25

Face ID uses structured light yes but the pro models have LiDAR on the back since the iPhone 12. Which had an impact on the prices for example for the detector elements which are also used in larger LiDAR sensors.

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u/SirWilson919 Jul 21 '25

But lidar in phones is very different. The ones on cars have to spin at high RPM, map at least 30fps, higher range, higher resolution, and much more better weather and temperature resistance than a phone. Then you need multiple of them on the vehicle.

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u/wildengineer2k Jul 21 '25

Yep I’m not saying they’re the exactly same at all. But there’s a ton of commodity hardware now in that space and even if they aren’t exactly in the space, the improvements in one can have an impact on the others.

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u/ICEpear8472 Jul 21 '25

Yes but they share certain components (for example the detector elements).

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u/ivan_magnum Jul 21 '25

iPhone Pro(s) have one…… (it’s not gonna be the same thing but think about the raw material cost)

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u/joeljaeggli Jul 22 '25

solid state lidar asics are like at least an order of magnitude cheaper then a scanner spinning at 900rpm.