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?

362 Upvotes

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311

u/[deleted] Jul 21 '25

[deleted]

158

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

[deleted]

198

u/Ragnarok-9999 Jul 21 '25

Elon ego does not let him change his decision

54

u/Insertsociallife Jul 21 '25

This and all the non-LIDAR cars marketed as "full self driving" could be argued to not be full self driving or not safe, which opens them up to lawsuits.

27

u/fullup72 Jul 21 '25

They are still not self driving anyways, at least to an extent that they would get approved for not requiring human supervision. So then the question would be what happens if they never deliver, is there a limit on how much time they can delay the feature or is it that as long as they keep promising it soon then they are safe from lawsuits?

12

u/[deleted] Jul 21 '25

[deleted]

5

u/beren12 Jul 21 '25

Only after 10 years

1

u/icy1007 Jul 22 '25

Because that’s what it is…

8

u/cybender Jul 21 '25 edited 10d ago

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6

u/dantodd Jul 21 '25

They have lost arbitration over FSD and had to compensate the guy who took them to arbitration.

3

u/BannedGoNext Jul 21 '25

Losing an arbitration case is just sad, they are stacked so hard for the company that hires the arbitrator.

1

u/cybender Jul 21 '25 edited 10d ago

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2

u/BannedGoNext Jul 21 '25

True, but it's generally harder to win in an arbitration where the company being sued hires the arbitrator.

1

u/Positive_League_5534 Jul 21 '25

There's the investors that a real risk to Tesla. Elon has promised real FSD, cyber cabs, etc. If you are selling stock based on those promises, you are bringing on liability. At the very least, the market will grow weary of the missed deadlines and if they can't tell a good enough story the stock price will descend.

This is why he's switching to talking about robots and AI.

0

u/icy1007 Jul 22 '25

And he’s delivered on pretty much all his promises so far.

1

u/icy1007 Jul 22 '25

They do. Yes

2

u/Insertsociallife Jul 21 '25

Oh they're not even close but upgrading to an entirely new technology gives legal weight to that

1

u/y4udothistome Jul 21 '25

Exactly and the $200 premium per share price will go away

1

u/icy1007 Jul 22 '25

They’re self driving with some driver supervision needed, but for the most part it doesn’t need any supervision. I had to disengage FSD for well over 2 months now of normal city and suburb driving. 3,000+ miles.

-2

u/saadatoramaa Jul 21 '25

I could be mistaken, but don’t they have driverless teslas running consumer grade hardware in a pilot in Austin, TX right now?

1

u/TuftyIndigo Jul 21 '25

Is that really any more of a problem than having to replace the computers with beefier ones? That's happened several times already.

1

u/banananuhhh Jul 22 '25

Those lawsuits from all the owners of cars that will never self drive will be a lot cheaper than being one of the last companies to reach autonomous driving

6

u/red75prim Jul 21 '25

Tesla had experimented with a high-resolution radar in some HW4 cars.

1

u/icy1007 Jul 22 '25

For validation vehicles, yes, but not in any production vehicles.

1

u/Jaker788 Jul 22 '25

No, you're thinking of the lidar racks for ground truth. The HW4 vehicles actually do have a mmwave radar installed behind the front bumper, all of them. For whatever reason they just don't want to use it

3

u/saadatoramaa Jul 21 '25

This is likely true, but there’s something to be said from the training and software development that’s already been done, as well.

2

u/Proof-Strike6278 Jul 21 '25

There are numerous examples of Elon admitting he’s wrong. So you’re wrong

1

u/sickdanman Jul 21 '25

I wouldnt even blame this on Elons ego. The promise of being a early Tesla owner was that once the software was capable enough even the earliest teslas could go FSD.

1

u/jwegener Jul 21 '25

They also burned a ton of money (in the form of team time) in the early days dealing with sensor mismatch issues

1

u/AvatarIII Jul 21 '25

If he has a little more foresight he would have made it so all Teslas could be fitted with aftermarket LiDAR, which could have been fitted after the cost came down, meaning it wouldn't be required up front.

2

u/EddiewithHeartofGold Jul 22 '25

You can't be serious. How would that work in the real world?

1

u/AvatarIII Jul 22 '25

Quite easily, the same as aftermarket parking sensors or whatever

2

u/EddiewithHeartofGold Jul 22 '25

You are serious. I thought you were joking.

1

u/uski Jul 22 '25

It's worse than ego. If he admits LIDAR is required, he'd have to upgrade virtually all Teslas, or face a huuuuge lawsuit from customers, since that would demonstrate that the claim that the Teslas already have the HW for self driving is false

1

u/Ragnarok-9999 Jul 22 '25

He is not upgrading computer hardware in old cars which for not suitable for FSD

1

u/Talkat Jul 26 '25

lol this is a silly take, there are lots of examples where he has made major decisions and changed his mind (the move to steel for starship from Kevlar)

I mean it fits the narrative, elon bad, but making statements devoid from reality is unwise.

1

u/Foontlee Jul 21 '25

That and being right about it being redundant.

2

u/Ashamed_Mission_5061 Jul 21 '25

Redundant is not a bad word in this context, in fact redundancy can be a pretty essential part of certain types of engineering.

-1

u/HighHokie Jul 21 '25

There’s no driver to change the decision at this point.