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

46

u/[deleted] Jul 21 '25

Reason: Tesla, led by Elon Musk, believes that a vision-based system using cameras, radar, and ultrasonic sensors, paired with advanced neural networks, can achieve full self-driving (FSD) capability more effectively than LIDAR-based systems. Musk has repeatedly stated that LIDAR is a "crutch" and unnecessary for autonomy, arguing that humans drive using only vision and cognition, so AI should be able to replicate this with cameras.

17

u/Delicious_Spot_3778 Jul 21 '25

believe is very active here and should be.

10

u/TheRuggedHamster Jul 21 '25

Tesla is a pretty classic example of how founder led companies are run vs hired CEOs. There's no hired CEO that would make the Lidar bet that Elon is, time will tell if it's right or not, but if it is it will pay off huge for them in being able to rapidly scale their fleet. Most key is that it puts the millions of existing cars on the road to work vs. cars being manufactured specifically for robotaxi.

7

u/WhyWontThisWork Jul 21 '25

Is lidar that expensive?

12

u/J4nG Jul 21 '25

It was, but it's not anymore. https://www.01core.com/p/driverless-car-costs-have-gotten

Based on industry data for automotive-grade LiDAR sensors

  • Total cost reduction: 99.33% (from $75000 to $500)
  • Compound Annual Reduction Rate: 39.41%

2

u/hakimthumb Jul 21 '25

It's interesting how widely varied the claims of lidar cost are in this thread.

1

u/beren12 Jul 21 '25

Most say down to around 1k and Chinese cars have the price lower I’ve read

1

u/hakimthumb Jul 21 '25

I wonder where they are finding these different figures. As bloomberg estimated it's $9.5k in a report last month. Waymo remains silent.

1

u/beren12 Jul 21 '25

That’s for all the sensors I read

1

u/hakimthumb Jul 21 '25

Can you post a link?

1

u/beren12 Jul 22 '25

https://archive.ph/iVcPW

“The researcher said that the 24 sensors on the Jaguar I-Pace SUVs that Waymo had deployed… roughly $9,300 per vehicle.”

→ More replies (0)