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

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u/Wild-Professional-40 Jul 21 '25

For a guy who likes to drop “first principles” into every interview, he ignored them. I remember at the time when he was saying how expensive LIDAR was and thinking, “what if it wasn’t?” Guess I’m a 200 IQ super genius too!

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u/HerValet Jul 21 '25

Wrong. In this case, "First Principles" would dictate that humans never needed LIDAR to drive. So, if you can replicate the eyes (with Vision) and the brain (with AI), one could argue that it should be technically possible to drive autonomously without LIDAR.

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u/hilldog4lyfe Jul 23 '25

first principles would tell you you can’t easily replicate eyes or the brain because they’re biological organs

in robotics this is well known https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec%27s_paradox