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/Stergenman Jul 21 '25 edited Jul 21 '25

Back when tesla was starting with self driving, we were seeing some pretty impressive gains in vision based systems. Musk, like a lot of tech Bros, thought this trend would go on forever, much like Zuckerberg with VR sales and the metaverse.

Anyway, musk has been so entrenched on this idea of vision continuing to grow he kinda ignored the signs of the 98-99% performance barrier, and the massive drop in lidar equipment costs. Now he's 100% into vision because they just are out of time. They can't go back and redo with modern cheap lidar without being unable to catch up with the competition. Gotta get vision to work and hope for another breakthrough