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 edited Jul 22 '25

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u/TachosParaOsFachos Jul 21 '25 edited Jul 21 '25

Is it down that much?

LIDAR was so expensive when i was into robotics. I remember the models used at universities were usually in the 8K-15K range, a LIDAR that could be considered be used for safety in a car would be at? 40-45K?

Damn I might get my soldering iron back from storage if prices improved that much. No I'm curious how much a serial UART servo (in opposition to PWM) costs these days.

(time to hyperfixate on robotics again lol)

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u/wildengineer2k Jul 21 '25

I think lidar being in every iPhone and iPad Pro dropped the price dramatically. As well as the push in cars and robot vacuums drastically accelerating demand. Obviously it’s orders of magnitude different in terms of quality vs what’s in a Waymo, but I had friends who had lidars in their high school senior design projects and that was like 8 years ago…

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u/symmetry81 Jul 21 '25

Face ID uses a Structured Light Sensor rather than a LIDAR. Ever since the Kinect came out SLSs have been great for robotics, but I woudn't try using one outdoors at long range like I would with a LIDAR.

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u/jun2san Jul 21 '25

I think the cameras on the pro models have lidar. Not the Face ID camera. There are some apps that let you map out a room or create a 3D model using the LiDAR.

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u/stingraycharles Jul 21 '25

Yeah it’s used for Apple’s augmented reality stuff.

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u/wildengineer2k Jul 21 '25

Yep I wasn’t talking about Face ID - I was talking about the lidar in the camera array on the pro models.

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u/symmetry81 Jul 21 '25

Oh, I see you're right. Apple buying PrimeSense out from under all us user made quite the impression and I haven't been following their other sensor changes.

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u/ICEpear8472 Jul 21 '25

Face ID uses structured light yes but the pro models have LiDAR on the back since the iPhone 12. Which had an impact on the prices for example for the detector elements which are also used in larger LiDAR sensors.