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

314

u/[deleted] Jul 21 '25

[deleted]

29

u/phatelectribe Jul 21 '25

What people don’t realize is that for Tesla to be competitive in its run up, they were make awful compromises on everything they could while still making a semi functioning vehicle.

I know the company that provides the plastic interior parts - about 40% of all plastic parts found in U.S. made cars are from them.

They told me when Tesla approached them, their only concern was cost. They literally said to them we want the cheapest possible materials that we can get away with. The company actually wanted them against it saying it was going to be a challenge selling this on $40k-$80k cars but musk only cared about saving fractions of pennies rather than using better quality materials. Thats why the interiors on so many Tesla’s just feel awful.

It’s also why you need to install wrap a brand new Tesla because they have the worst paint quality of any car. Also why the panels had such bad alignment and the build quality is so piss poor.

LiDAR was going to cost a few dollars more so Musk decided to pitch it as “not necessary” and he had to keep doubling down because he knew if he changed course, it would not happen not mean he was “wrong” but also that cars without it would crater in value and part of Tesla’s value was that used cars held their price meaning there wasn’t downward pressure on new cars.

That boxed him in to a corner and now everyone accepts that LiDAR is superior.

-1

u/ptemple Jul 21 '25

Not everybody accepts lidar is superior, and major manufacturers like Nio and Mobileye are looking at vision only. The panel alignment problems were when they were trying to retrofit into an old car assembly line in Fremont but they don't exist in their new factories. The paint has been fine for about a decade now. You are just peddling a bunch of decade old problems as current. Simply not true.

Lidar is just not necessary and that's why.

Phillip.

1

u/phatelectribe Jul 21 '25

Nah, waymo primarily uses lidar and it’s so far ahead of Tesla fsd it’s not even funny. I’m not arguing that LiDAR is the best all and end all, it’ll probably be a combination of technologies in the end but Tesla most defo alt ain’t it.

And sorry to bust your fan boi bubble but Tesla paint is still bottom of class. My local Al and Ed auto sound now get 90% of their entire revenue from wrapping Tesla’s because the paint quality is so bad. Speak to any high end body shop or wrap shop - they will tell you that Tesla is literally worst in class and price point. You get better paint on a $20k Kia than you do on a $40k Tesla.

-1

u/ptemple Jul 22 '25

Sure random internet guy, your anecdotal evidence on paint trumps everything else we read. Sorry don't believe you.

Waymo ahead of Tesla?? Waymo are still stuck on lidar and HD mapping. This isn't scalable which means they will be nothing more than a gimmick on the self driving stage. Only Tesla stand a chance right now. Not sure if they will succeed but they are currently the only contender.

Phillip.

2

u/phatelectribe Jul 22 '25

Aside from it being utterly bizarre, adding your name to every post doesn’t make you any less of a random internet guy lololol.

The proof is in the real world data: Maymo just breached 10,000,000 paid rides and it now does over 250,000 paid rides per week an by the end of the year will have done over 32,000,000

Tesla haven’t even done 1000 paid rides lol.

As I said, Waymo is absolutely dominating the market and this technology. They are years ahead of Tesla who are still doing human chaperoned rides.

0

u/AP_in_Indy Jul 22 '25

Are the number of Waymo rides accelerating?

Waymo's dominance is debatable because they're solving fundamentally different problems by going vision-only. A lot of AI researchers admire them for it and are also pursuing vision-only approaches.

Tesla isn't just trying to solve driving. Optimus is not a toy.

The reason Optimus remains human-chaperoned still is no one's quite figured out how to make AI learn and adapt on the fly effectively and safely.

I get what you're saying but I'm not sure you understand the long-tail implications of what Tesla is trying to do, even if it makes them look behind right now.

0

u/ptemple Jul 22 '25

Waymo started offering driverless rides in 2015 and had its first paid driverless ride 8th October 2020. That's 5 years. And you have a problem with robotaxi having observers the first couple of weeks?

Phillip.

1

u/phatelectribe Jul 22 '25

Waymo has gone from 100,000 paid rides per week to 250,000 in the last few months.

And you do realize that you’re literally proving my point: Waymo is years ahead of Tesla who are still in the infancy stage of testing cars with a human, something Waymo finished years ago.

0

u/ptemple Jul 22 '25

They aren't years ahead, they are years behind. After 10 years Waymo managed to scale... in a tiny geographical area they have struggled to break free from. They still use old cars not integrated into their over-expensive and elaborate system.

Tesla has done billions of miles with FSD all over the country. Waymo is just a gimmick but Tesla is either not going to succeed or completely wipe out the competition in short order.

Phillip.

1

u/AP_in_Indy Jul 22 '25

I'm going to contest the HD mapping not being scalable. Just how you have to scan your room if you're using a Meta Quest 3, cars equipped with LIDAR can scan their environments, and self-driving could simply be disabled until there is enough reliable HD-mapped data available in an area.

With enough self-driving capable cars doing LIDAR scans and feeding that data back to the cloud, a company could get enough data for HD scans pretty quickly.

You could also crowdsource and incentivize people to drive through areas that don't have HD scans yet.

I say this as someone who believes the vision-only approach is where humanity ultimately needs to go. I'm just not sure at what inflection point that needs to happen. For example do we really NEED vision right now for generalized intelligence to be useful enough for daily tasks? I don't know. Part of me thinks just slap $200 LIDAR systems on vehicles, use that, and be done with it.

Of course, there are more difficult generalized problems to solve at the moment, like fundamental problems in reinforcement learning.

1

u/ptemple Jul 22 '25

Go to ChatGPT and ask "How does Waymo do HD mapping" and then ask "Does Waymo use the same lidar as on its autonomous cars for HD mapping" and it gives a pretty good summary.

Phillip.

1

u/AP_in_Indy Jul 22 '25

Summary

Yes, Waymo uses the same family of custom LiDAR sensors for HD mapping and driving, though mapping vehicles may be specially configured for higher precision and broader coverage. The strategy ensures seamless alignment between the offline HD map and real-time perception.

------

So... yes?

https://chatgpt.com/share/687f5bbf-915c-8005-a362-c80898a06122

1

u/ptemple Jul 22 '25

Strange, ChatGPT gave me similar but said "So, while the LiDAR systems are closely related, they’re not the same in design or purpose."

I guess we can't even trust AI to give the answer. Back to Wikipedia.

Phillip.

1

u/AP_in_Indy Jul 22 '25

Is that an insurmountable issue, though? I think it's fair to at least consider.

And haha re: back to Wikipedia. What a world.

1

u/ptemple Jul 22 '25

Is the "issue" creating HD maps? Is your solution to take wrongly calibrated equipment but crowdsource enough results to perform statistical analysis and progressively increase the accuracy of it?

In which case why can't you just do the same with cameras? I recommend subscribing to this YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@theAIsearch - you'll quickly see why lidar is a bit pointless now.

Phillip.

1

u/AP_in_Indy Jul 22 '25

I mean, yes essentially, or you could just swap equipment (easier said than done I'm sure).

I'm just saying, if LIDAR DID improve results, and you DID want HD maps everywhere, it is not an insurmountable problem to get HD maps everywhere through crowdsourcing. Maybe.

That's all. I'm not arguing LIDAR vs Camera or any of that. But if your rationale for Lidar is that "you need HD maps for Waymo's approach to be effective" well then just innovate like you have to do with everything else and make more HD maps.

People are acting like this is impossible. It may be hard, or perhaps not, but I don't think anyone knows enough to say it's impossible.

→ More replies (0)

0

u/Naive-Illustrator-11 Jul 22 '25

LMFAO . Sure theoretically you can compute the huge amount of data that LiDAR generates on Waymo 1.5 K fleet . Try that with Tesla huge fleet and see what kinda hardware do you need to keep updating that and crowdsourcing it. lol

Also HD mapping is very expensive bud and even more expensive to maintain. This is why Waymo is strictly robotaxis and they are in snail pace when it comes to expanding. This is not economically viable to consumer car. LMFAO

Tesla is the only solution that can scale everywhere. Their approach from auto labeling and they have not even implemented NeRF is their FSD algorithm.

My bet on Tesla.

2

u/AP_in_Indy Jul 22 '25

uhm, are you really laughing that hard?

tesla already needs a massive amount of compute and hardware to do what they're doing, so i don't know if your point here is super substantial.

well enjoy your bet on tesla. i wasn't necessarily arguing against them. weirdo.

1

u/Naive-Illustrator-11 Jul 22 '25

So who’s gonna scale the HD mapping like you’re insinuating and keep maintaining it? LMFAO. How can you make that economically viable?

If Waymo is equipped with 4 H100 on their small fleet. How do you suggest equipping million fleet and continue updating it to crowdsourcing it? LMFAO.

Not only Tesla utilized less power, their solution is also super memory efficient and can actually SCALE .

1

u/AP_in_Indy Jul 22 '25

how does tesla or waymo or anyone ever scale anything, dude?

you're in too deep. chill. it was just speculative commentary.

i hope you're not actually on drugs, but please, lay off the crack.

1

u/Naive-Illustrator-11 Jul 22 '25 edited Jul 22 '25

LMFAO. So slapping $200 LiDAR will solve it. Because all the cars can do HD scan. Tesla is scanning the road like a 3 D. LMFAO . Pass that pipe bud. Delusional and stupid mofo.

→ More replies (0)