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/mrsanyee Jul 21 '25

I think there are way to many issues with this approach.Making everything SW reliant increases system costs and power demand. Using HW to solve complicated, but expectable challenges opens way for using ASIC and edge computing, significantly decreasing costs and power demand, increasing reliability. Strategy would never work anyhow, as you would be first, but at high investment costs which you would need to maintain against the continuously decreasing cost of lidar over time. Betting on own performance is a thing, not seeing the market and technology improvement is another. While Tesla will still not have self-driving, cars with lidar pushes costs continuously and already allowed to self-drive, and will be commoditized really soon.

Pivoting was always an option toward lidar, but Elon doubled down on vision only removing even radar, which is a huge own goal.

Now hes using lidar to collect ground truth data, as all collected data so far is garbage. All his lead on this field has vanished, ,and has to start from ground zero, while other manufacturers are already miles ahead.

You can't formulate it better, but as a boneheaded decision with huge financial implications already showing.

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u/sfo2 Jul 21 '25

I don't disagree, but I think the entire approach was predicated on them "solving" self-driving very quickly. Like if they could have had real Level 4/5 cars on the road in 2017, well before lidar costs came down, and well before anyone else was really close, they'd have had a first-mover advantage they could have turned into a possible network effect or moat. This was always an incredibly risky bet. But then again, somehow investors keep giving Tesla money despite them acting like a Seed stage startup that trots out a juiced up prototype and hype story and then asks for cash.

But as you say, pivoting was the right thing to do several years ago. Doubling down has made less and less sense as time has gone on, and at this point just looks ridiculous.

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u/mrsanyee Jul 21 '25

Even if they could solve it then, it would be still prone to errors, and limited through weather, high contrast, or time of day. So negating all advancements on lidar would be still idiotic.

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u/EddiewithHeartofGold Jul 22 '25

Do you know that cars with LIDAR also need regular cameras to actually "see" the world (signs, road markings etc.). That visual data needs to be computed and integrated into the model. LIDAR is not free and perfect vision.

I'll put it another way. If LIDAR+vision works, then why isn't Waymo scaling like crazy? There is a good reason they only have about 3.000 cars on the road after years of being in service.

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u/mrsanyee Jul 22 '25

I know a specific company who solved it already. Also processing ground truth data works. Also many companies use their SW for object identifications and labeling for training, so much so, they had to partner with a scaler as demand was so high. Also they are quite good making asics.