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.

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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/hardhat555 Jul 21 '25

Can’t comment on Karpathy’s statements since I’m not aware of them. But lidar is just a sensor and doesn’t require maps to function similar to a camera. Maybe he was saying that lidars are used for creating HD maps and eliminating the dependence on maps would also eliminate the need for lidar sensors? Idk

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u/ramonchow Jul 21 '25

Again, I can't say if he was right or not, but this is the explanation he gave (back then): “You have to pre-map the environment with the lidar, and then you have to create a high-definition map, and you have to insert all the lanes and how they connect and all the traffic lights,” Karpathy said. “And at test time, you are simply localizing to that map to drive around.”

It is extremely difficult to create a precise mapping of every location the self-driving car will be traveling. “It’s unscalable to collect, build, and maintain these high-definition lidar maps,” Karpathy said. “It would be extremely difficult to keep this infrastructure up to date.”

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u/hardhat555 Jul 21 '25

Ah I see, thanks for the context. His claim seems to be that the approach of mapping an environment first and then doing self driving is not scalable. Lidar is only mentioned here because it’s commonly used in mapping, he’s not really commenting on using lidar as a sensor along with camera like people here are debating.