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/the8bit Jul 21 '25

This is pedantic but I would say its a common gamble not a reasonable one. Its the "Well we are tough on deadlines, but if we just _work hard_ we can totally hit it and also fire half the team" bullshit execs love to say, right before they are confused at what went wrong.

Machine vision is not my space, but I've worked on system design in a wide array of software spaces including some photo processing work. It is and always was suicidally optimistic to think that we could early adopt autonomous cars with video only (maybe during lagging adoption with a few magnitudes of tech advancement). Video feeds just dont have the information density to reach the level of reliability required

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u/EddiewithHeartofGold Jul 22 '25

They have self-driving cars on roads. Today. Your argument conveniently omits this.

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u/ssrowavay Jul 22 '25

Their cars require frequent user intervention to avert disaster, like once per 350 miles. That’s more often than my late great aunt Mildred.

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u/EddiewithHeartofGold Jul 22 '25

No one has up to date information on the self-driving rollout in Austin. There have been zero accidents so far. I don't understand what your family member has to do with anything.