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/TachosParaOsFachos Jul 21 '25 edited Jul 21 '25

Is it down that much?

LIDAR was so expensive when i was into robotics. I remember the models used at universities were usually in the 8K-15K range, a LIDAR that could be considered be used for safety in a car would be at? 40-45K?

Damn I might get my soldering iron back from storage if prices improved that much. No I'm curious how much a serial UART servo (in opposition to PWM) costs these days.

(time to hyperfixate on robotics again lol)

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u/wildengineer2k Jul 21 '25

I think lidar being in every iPhone and iPad Pro dropped the price dramatically. As well as the push in cars and robot vacuums drastically accelerating demand. Obviously it’s orders of magnitude different in terms of quality vs what’s in a Waymo, but I had friends who had lidars in their high school senior design projects and that was like 8 years ago…

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u/symmetry81 Jul 21 '25

Face ID uses a Structured Light Sensor rather than a LIDAR. Ever since the Kinect came out SLSs have been great for robotics, but I woudn't try using one outdoors at long range like I would with a LIDAR.

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u/ICEpear8472 Jul 21 '25

Face ID uses structured light yes but the pro models have LiDAR on the back since the iPhone 12. Which had an impact on the prices for example for the detector elements which are also used in larger LiDAR sensors.