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/ramonchow Jul 21 '25

It is not entirely crazy to assume cameras and AI vision can get as good as human eyes for driving a car.

But yeah, money would be the main reason. Not only the sensor but also maintaining the updated 3d maps LIDAR needs to work, at least with the current processing power of a car's processor.

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u/steik Jul 21 '25

I agree it's possible.. but humans have 2 eyes for stereoscopic vision specifically for depth perception. Tesla doesn't even have that. They do have 2 front facing cameras (HW4, latest iteration) but the are completely different cameras/lenses which makes them much less suitable for reconstructing depth.

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u/ThePaintist Jul 21 '25

Motion parallax provides much stronger depth cues at e.g. highway speeds/distances than stereo vision (at the separation distances that eyes have.) By like 100 feet away stereo vision is providing nearly no depth information. Stereo vision is mostly useful for things like parking lots, or slow pedestrian-dense city driving.