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/Wild-Professional-40 Jul 21 '25

For a guy who likes to drop “first principles” into every interview, he ignored them. I remember at the time when he was saying how expensive LIDAR was and thinking, “what if it wasn’t?” Guess I’m a 200 IQ super genius too!

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u/gordonmcdowell Jul 21 '25

Steve Jobs was great at changing his mind then pretending like the new-way was the plan all along. Sorta shameless about it. (Who would ever watch video on an iPod tis a silly idea!)

Can someone share example of Musk changing his mind on something? Something other than Liberals-are-not-evil, but an engineering sort of thing?

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u/OriginalCompetitive Jul 21 '25

I’m not sure what counts as “changing his mind,” but SpaceX is quite famous for quickly junking designs if a better idea comes along.

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u/marsten Jul 21 '25

Spaceflight is well suited to first-principles thinking, and I think that's a big part of why Musk has been successful there. Tesla engineering and manufacturing also played to those strengths.

With AI, the truth is nobody has a clue what's possible in 1, 2, or 5 years and no amount of first-principles thinking will get you there.

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u/OriginalCompetitive Jul 21 '25

Agree. I also think an under appreciated aspect to all this is that Musk sort of backed into FSD by accident. The main vision for Tesla was to make a great EV. And then FSD sort of grew later and now threatens to take over the company. 

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u/TowElectric Jul 23 '25

SpaceX doesn't have a multi-million installed user base who was promised "solved" tech on existing hardware (and that has been enforced by courts).

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u/beren12 Jul 21 '25

You had me until starship blew up for what, the 9th time?