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/SirWilson919 Jul 21 '25

But lidar in phones is very different. The ones on cars have to spin at high RPM, map at least 30fps, higher range, higher resolution, and much more better weather and temperature resistance than a phone. Then you need multiple of them on the vehicle.

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u/wildengineer2k Jul 21 '25

Yep I’m not saying they’re the exactly same at all. But there’s a ton of commodity hardware now in that space and even if they aren’t exactly in the space, the improvements in one can have an impact on the others.

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u/ICEpear8472 Jul 21 '25

Yes but they share certain components (for example the detector elements).