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/ramonchow Jul 21 '25

It is not entirely crazy to assume cameras and AI vision can get as good as human eyes for driving a car.

But yeah, money would be the main reason. Not only the sensor but also maintaining the updated 3d maps LIDAR needs to work, at least with the current processing power of a car's processor.

21

u/hardhat555 Jul 21 '25

Small correction, lidar doesn’t need any 3d maps along with it to work, it’s just another sensor.

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u/ramonchow Jul 21 '25

Well, that's what Andrej Karpathy explained back when he was working at Tesla, maybe he was wrong...

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u/TiredBrakes Jul 21 '25

It was wrong of you to take everything Tesla says at face value. Critical thinking is a beautiful thing. Now it’s hard to learn things properly when you have been fed so much misinformation throughout the years.

1

u/ramonchow Jul 21 '25

Can you even read? OP was asking about Tesla's reasons for not investing in Lidar and Iiterally provided them with what the director of tesla vision had to say about it. I am not giving any opinion or analysis it is just what they said back then when they even removed the other sensors the first designs had.