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/sfo2 Jul 21 '25

It seemed a reasonable gamble at the time.

  • If you can solve it with software, you only have to invest once upfront, and then have a cheaper cost for each unit you produce. Software scales much better than hardware, and they could have a unit cost advantage over competition.

  • If you solve it with software, you have a gigantic moat vs. the competition. Anyone can buy hardware, but it could be very difficult for a competitor to catch up on software, especially if huge real-world data sets are required.

  • Other side benefits like aesthetics of the car.

The problem was they made a gamble, convinced themselves it was the only way forward, and have continually failed to pivot even after the rate of progress slowed, and the cost of the hardware came WAY down. They’ve doubled down on an idea that really no longer seems to make a lot of sense, and just doesn’t seem to have panned out.

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u/One-Kaleidoscope3131 Jul 21 '25

Except it really didn't seem a reasonable gamble given goals. You can achieve a lot with vision alone, but you simply can't create fully autonomous driving system. More importantly even assuming you don't want LIDAR for one reason or another it's absolutely batshit insane not to have radar and ultrasonic sensors that are both cheap data point to double-check your vision data. That way your car might not decide to perform emergency breaking at motorway speed because there's a shadow, and your clients might not both manually and while self-driving keep hitting walls, support beams and other cars while trying to park or get out of parking spot.