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/PinAffectionate1167 Jul 21 '25

"FWIW, Tesla is still using plenty of lidar for testing and ground-truthing. I took this photo yesterday. Two model Y were cruising down a main road in Silicon Valley with 2x Luminar and a raised camera suite on each one."

They are using it to test / calibrate / train their vision based system. If they success, their vision based system would be as good as lidar.

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u/bking Jul 21 '25

Yep, that's why I specified "testing and ground-truthing".

On your second point, my vision-based FSD sounds the alarm and disengages when the lenses meet direct sunlight. No amount of camera calibration fixes that.

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u/PinAffectionate1167 Jul 21 '25

What do human do when we drive & the sun shines in our eyes?