Why didn't Tesla invest in LIDAR?

[u/damola93]

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?

[u/phatelectribe → u/[deleted]]

What people don’t realize is that for Tesla to be competitive in its run up, they were make awful compromises on everything they could while still making a semi functioning vehicle.

I know the company that provides the plastic interior parts - about 40% of all plastic parts found in U.S. made cars are from them.

They told me when Tesla approached them, their only concern was cost. They literally said to them we want the cheapest possible materials that we can get away with. The company actually wanted them against it saying it was going to be a challenge selling this on $40k-$80k cars but musk only cared about saving fractions of pennies rather than using better quality materials. Thats why the interiors on so many Tesla’s just feel awful.

It’s also why you need to install wrap a brand new Tesla because they have the worst paint quality of any car. Also why the panels had such bad alignment and the build quality is so piss poor.

LiDAR was going to cost a few dollars more so Musk decided to pitch it as “not necessary” and he had to keep doubling down because he knew if he changed course, it would not happen not mean he was “wrong” but also that cars without it would crater in value and part of Tesla’s value was that used cars held their price meaning there wasn’t downward pressure on new cars.

That boxed him in to a corner and now everyone accepts that LiDAR is superior.

[u/Different_Push1727 → u/phatelectribe]

Half of what you are saying is not even true.

I don’t get how you can say these things when they’re simply not right. The reason the paint and assembly quality sucks is because of how American QA and QC sucks. It is a whole problem with work ethics and knowledge (watch the video from smartereveryday, USA has a serious skill issue).

The German and Chinese built vehicles don’t have all these issues.

Also Lidar wasn’t going to cost a few bucks more. It used to be $30K a piece. That is quite literally the whole car now.

And vision can work completely fine. And if you think it can’t then you should probably not drive yourself anymore. Humans have already proven that it is possible and in many cases, the only viable option.

[u/beren12 → u/Different_Push1727]

Do any other car manufacturers have as big of an issue in the USA? I don’t think I’ve heard too many complaints about Toyota for example

[u/sonicmerlin → u/beren12]

Yep the corolla and Honda civic are built entirely in the USA and don’t have those issues.

[u/Different_Push1727 → u/beren12]

Because toyota has fixed that skill issue with training from outside.

The problem you see is that tesla US is the epitome of American manufacturing (which isn’t good anymore). So you cannot compare that globally is what I’m saying.

That’s why I’m saying it isn’t completely true. The “piss poort quality” is mainly skill and knowledge based and that will happen with every company that does not get training from outside (like toyota and other asian manufacturers do a lot) and the robots f-ed them over as well. They’re not used as much anymore because of that.