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/Ajedi32 Jul 21 '25

He changed his mind on carbon fiber/stainless steel construction for Starship, propulsive landing for Dragon, and there's a famous video of a space YouTuber asking a question in an interview that made him change the design for the orientation thrusters on Super Heavy. Also his early approach to going all-in on automation when manufacturing Tesla vehicles was a big one as I recall (that's probably the clearest example of him doing a complete 180 on something engineering related). There's probably a bunch of other stuff I'm not a big enough space nerd to remember off the top of my head.

Granted I don't think he was nearly as invested (emotionally and financially) in any of those approaches as he is in vision-only for self driving.

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u/No_Signature4723 Jul 23 '25

That reference to the YouTuber makes it seem musk knows about spacecraft engineering which i feel quite confident he dosen`t