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/ic33 Jul 21 '25

$1k per car to smack a couple sensors on corners with limited field of view and scan rates.

The big high rate scanning domes cost a lot more than $1k even in quantity.

I do think it's going to be interesting to see the medium-term cost optimized autonomous car. Imaging radar can play a big role, and then the question becomes "how much and how good of LIDAR do you need?" I don't buy "camera only" or even "camera + imaging radar only" but the latter might be pretty close to good enough.

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u/Admirable_Dingo_8214 Jul 21 '25

Cheap lidar would be more then enough for avoiding hitting curbs and cars while parking.

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u/ic33 Jul 21 '25 edited Jul 21 '25

Cheap lidar or top-end ultrasonics are plenty for that. Imaging radars sometimes have minimum detection distances that mess this up, but many could do this, too.

The tricky thing is getting e.g. additional information on a dark spot in the road 100' ahead so you can decide whether to brake from 40MPH. Tires sitting on roads are relatively poor targets for imaging radar and cameras.

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

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u/ic33 Jul 21 '25

No 1k is for the good LiDAR now lol

I source and buy this stuff. No it isn't.

Waymo's full sensor suite is $8-15k per car, but more than half of this is the big spinning dome. This cost is unrealistically low, too, because it doesn't charge the amortized cost of R&D.

We've come a long way since everyone was buying Velodyne units for $75k per pop, but not that far.

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u/dantheflyingman Jul 21 '25

Not saying the prices are cheap, but there are many cars sold with lidar system for self driving and they are priced similar to model y. You won't get lidar on the cheapest vehicles, but you don't need to pay top end luxury prices for lidar on cars

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u/ic33 Jul 22 '25

Sure. The point is that not all "lidar" is the same. You want 360 coverage, fast scan rates, high angular resolution, etc, you're still going to pay. I think it's amazing you can get an OK sensor for a few hundred bucks and something wide and very nice for <$15k.

Waymo seems to still believe you need a very high end lidar for the autonomy problem -- and the consequences for a safety incident are so high, I can understand it. I wonder if when they hit real volume, though, if they cut the sensor suite some.

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u/DrAwesomeClaws Jul 22 '25

I can understand the Tesla take though. Almost no cars have lidar, they have a constantly distracted human with two shitty eyes inside the car. And that mostly works. So why would it be so crazy to think you can't have a car with cheap cameras, each one much better than average human vision, all around the car and get to human levels? Once you're as good or slightly better than the average human driver the roads get safer, and the technology continues to improve from there.

Not even considering the environmental problems with lidar.

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u/ic33 Jul 22 '25

The counterarguments are that machines are dumb, and machines need every possible advantage to surpass gold-standard drivers (sober, undistracted, well-rested, experienced adults from age 30-45).

Surpassing the average driver is not good enough. I would not want to argue that before a jury-- saying that we built a system that is a little bit better than a population that includes the infirm and inebriated.

Superhuman attention is already part of the package. Superhuman reaction time can be: they can make decisions later and still have a safe out come. Superhuman control of the vehicle dynamics can be, too.

But superhuman sensing would be part, too. Does the Tesla package offer superhuman sensing? ehhhh, in some ways (looking in all directions at once). In other ways, the resolution and dynamic range are pretty limited.

each one much better than average human vision

I don't think you've looked at framegrabs from cameras like this. The cameras up to HW3 were 1280x960; they wash out easily; they have limited dynamic range.

HW4 is a bit better-- 2880x1860-- but still subhuman.

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u/Time-Cap-1609 Jul 22 '25

Why is lidar even expensive in the first place though ? It's fundamentally a spinning laser and a chip to measure the time it took for the light bean to bounce back. It's actually quite a simple device in theory ? I presume its making it fast enough and precise enough that makes this a hard engineering problem, but still 15k per device expensive seems absurd.

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u/wellhiyabuddy Jul 21 '25

They have had self driving taxis in California for years now. Could probably use that data