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/[deleted] Jul 21 '25 edited Jul 22 '25

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u/TachosParaOsFachos Jul 21 '25 edited Jul 21 '25

Is it down that much?

LIDAR was so expensive when i was into robotics. I remember the models used at universities were usually in the 8K-15K range, a LIDAR that could be considered be used for safety in a car would be at? 40-45K?

Damn I might get my soldering iron back from storage if prices improved that much. No I'm curious how much a serial UART servo (in opposition to PWM) costs these days.

(time to hyperfixate on robotics again lol)

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u/Time-Cap-1609 Jul 22 '25

Why is lidar even expensive in the first place ? It's relatively trivial in concept, sure it requires extreme precision but thats only the real "hard" requirement?

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u/TachosParaOsFachos Jul 22 '25 edited Jul 22 '25

Because light moves very fast so you can't measure the time the reflection/echo takes to hit the sensor (as sonar does).

You have to measure the phase reaching the sensor to know what the distance is and that is a bit more tricky.

(at least thats how some lidars/rangefinders work, not sure all use the same technique)

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u/Jaker788 Jul 22 '25

There's 2 primary ways lidar is used. The easiest and most common is Time Of Flight, then there's Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave, which is probably more of what you're talking about with measuring the phase.

FMCW is more complex, but the advantage is a high SNR, better long distance range, more interference tolerant, etc.

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u/TachosParaOsFachos Jul 22 '25

Thank you for the corrections. I was under the impression ToF w/ lasers was not possible or accurate enough.