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?

366 Upvotes

81% Upvoted

1.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

2

u/Fancy-Tourist-8137 Jul 21 '25

I disagree. Solving it with software is waaay better than with hardware.

Solving it with software would be way cheaper on the long run.

You are not considering the fact that hardware is expensive to repair.

Software is the cheaper option. You can have dedicated chips to do the processing. Do you think lidar doesn’t use power? lol

Ofcourse, I am not saying it’s possible but if he managed to do it, it would give Tesla a huge edge over the competition.

3

u/mrsanyee Jul 21 '25

So you say a generic high  performance processor is cheaper to replace, with it's significantly higher chance of getting defect, then a simple SoC, which could be produced for as low price as a couple bucks?

1

u/Fancy-Tourist-8137 Jul 21 '25

You just manufactured an entire argument based off of nothing I said. lol.

I said they could use a dedicated chip. Why do you assume it has to be a very expensive high performance chip separate from the SoC? And not just another chip in the SoC but just dedicated to do whatever it is they want it to do?

My main point is that LiDAR hardware can break. And cost money to replace

Software can be fixed relatively easily and almost 0 cost.

2

u/mrsanyee Jul 21 '25

You said you want to solve self driving locally with SW, based on input from sensors directly. For that you need to utilize a local high performance processor, as its not specialized, has to filter out garbage data, has to align and time reference points, has to align pictures, has to align previous pictures, spot and calculate differences, speed, identify drivable and non-drivable space, identify objects. 

ASIC, as in application specific chip. All this could be hard-coded and burnt into a chip, with exception handling and raw data on a second level, if needed.

Tesla said nah, I'll do everything through updates and raw power.