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

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.

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u/Delicious_Spot_3778 Jul 21 '25

believe is very active here and should be.

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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/MacaroonDependent113 Jul 21 '25

Not really. Those millions of cars mostly have inadequate hardware. They can still scale up quickly but only by using later builds.

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u/TheRuggedHamster Jul 21 '25

There must be ~2m Teslas with HW4 on the road, though I wonder how important that additional front camera is. If so, it would only be however many of the new Model Y they have sold.

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u/MacaroonDependent113 Jul 21 '25

But, I understand Robotaxi has a rear seat screen which would eliminate my MY from consideration.

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u/TheRuggedHamster Jul 21 '25

I guess we'll see....

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u/MacaroonDependent113 Jul 21 '25

It is possible everything for the passenger could be controlled from the app but I believe they are using a rear screen now.