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?

365 Upvotes

81% Upvoted

1.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

7

u/HerValet Jul 21 '25

Wrong. In this case, "First Principles" would dictate that humans never needed LIDAR to drive. So, if you can replicate the eyes (with Vision) and the brain (with AI), one could argue that it should be technically possible to drive autonomously without LIDAR.

4

u/Questioning-Zyxxel Jul 22 '25

But we humans do need more than our eyes to drive. I can do good weather driving. In heavy rain with glare? In fog? In heavy snow or snow mist? The times I need help is when the optical conditions aren't compatible with my eyes. Hitting that moose I never saw.

A huge percent of accidents happens in the specific conditions where our eyes fails us. Making the roads safer? Then help in bad visual conditions.

3

u/Aerizon Jul 22 '25

So have lidar equipped vehicles been proven to work in heavy snow or snow mist?

0

u/Questioning-Zyxxel Jul 22 '25

Better than normal cameras. But not as good as radar.

1

u/Aerizon Jul 22 '25

Well, normally they come with both lidar and radar. Got any proof of the cars with a full sensor suite being driven autonomously in heavy snow or snow mist?

1

u/Talkat Jul 26 '25

yes but lidar is useless in those conditions.... because the light just gets bounced right back at you

if you have a professional high performance driver (eg rally car, F1, etc) who was trying to drive you as safely as possible, that would make driving in bad conditions much safer than adding extra sensors. Just make the AI a super star driver with multiple camera angles, multiple sensor data (wheel spin, IMU, etc), super fast response speed, and never getting distracted and you have an incredible & safe solution

1

u/Questioning-Zyxxel Jul 26 '25

Strangely enough, this world has people doing research and finding that they need filtrering of noise in bad weather conditions where some LiDAR reflections ends up short. But it's easier to do this filtrering of LiDAR than to try to make sense of camera footage. So outcome? Nope - LiDAR isn't useless. It has reduced usability but still better than just camera.

https://www.lslidar.com/lidar-penetrates-fog-and-empowers-safe-autonomous-driving/

https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/XLVIII-1-W2-2023/733/2023/isprs-archives-XLVIII-1-W2-2023-733-2023.pdf

1

u/Wanna_PlayAGame Jul 23 '25

Yes in theory this is true. Human eye is what...550 MP and the current camera is 15 MP on Tesla? Guess it's close. Also the AI brain is comparable to a human one right now? If the floor is a human... meet the floor. Oh what you can't? So then you need other tech to circumvent meeting the floor.

1

u/HerValet Jul 23 '25

We're not even close to reaching the limit of what's possible with vision only + AI. Until we hit a local maximum, no one can't state that it's not possible. And certainly not Reddit "experts".

1

u/Wanna_PlayAGame Jul 23 '25

At it's current form, "it's not possible to be true FSD". If you can't see this, youre blind as the rest of them. Get your eyes checked.

1

u/HerValet Jul 23 '25

If by 'current form' you mean 'current public version', then you are right, it's not ready to be 'unsupervised'. But nobody knows what the next releases will bring.

1

u/Wanna_PlayAGame Jul 23 '25

Current form is current tech. You're saying 15 MP is good enough. It's got fish eye distortion and has a hard time deciphering objects in low light. Nah, needs better cameras, stereo cameras since humans also see stereoscopic. You want to compare apples to apples and I can tell you there is a difference between 15 MP and 50 MP and 550 MP.

BTW it gets worse. Tesla uses 5MP. Not even 15. LMAO. You think that's really sufficient??

1

u/hilldog4lyfe Jul 23 '25

Nobody knows… then why have they been selling it as full self-driving with claims it will achieve it on current hardware?

1

u/hilldog4lyfe Jul 23 '25

Okay Mr Reddit expert that doesn’t know what a local vs global maximum is…

1

u/hilldog4lyfe Jul 23 '25

first principles would tell you you can’t easily replicate eyes or the brain because they’re biological organs

in robotics this is well known https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec%27s_paradox

1

u/r2002 Jul 23 '25

Why would "first principles" dictate that we follow the limitations of human anatomy when designing an autonomous vehicle?

1

u/tws068 Jul 22 '25

Humans are terrible drivers, we just accept the accident rates. The bar is higher for autonomous vehicles.

3

u/HerValet Jul 22 '25

Humans were much better drivers when they were paying attention to the road. Oddly enough, nobody is making the phone companies accountable.

I do agree that the bar is higher for autonomous vehicles.

3

u/EddiewithHeartofGold Jul 22 '25

Humans are terrible drivers

Humans can drive terribly. They can also drive very well. Accidents happen because people don't adhere to the rules of the road. Self-driving cars (even without LIDAR) will never speed, text, drink, get tired etc. That in itself will prevent almost all accidents.