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I always wondered why the rejection of lidar by Tesla. My guess is that it is more about profitability/availability than anything else. Just because humans use

I always wondered why the rejection of lidar by Tesla. My guess is that it is more about profitability/availability than anything else. Just because humans use eyeballs doesn't mean that it is the best bet for a computer. This sort of naturalistic fallacy led people to believe (~130 years ago and beyond) that the ideal flying machines would have flapping wings because, well, birds have wings and that is how they fly. Maybe I'm just salty my 2021 Model Y had lidar stripped out of it, and to me the more tech toys the better. Not that it matters because Tesla FSD is a scam and I wouldn't use it even if it came for free with the car.

ra7 5y ago
Lidar was expensive back then and would've added huge costs to the vehicles. Not to mention, it looked ugly on consumer cars. Elon conveniently used "humans use only vision" as an excuse and promised every Tesla has "sufficient" hardware for full autonomy. It's that premature promise that doesn't let them add sensors even now (and perhaps Elon's ego) without breaking trust and/or eating big costs for retrofitting. In short, Elon made a high risk bet that vision-only would be enough and so far has been proven horribly wrong. But I've got to say, it was brilliantly executed because it gave Tesla mindshare as a tech company, drove sales and contributed massively to their insane valuation.
- LegitShady 5y ago
  Tesla pivoted to video only. They originally tried with radar as well. So any such statements by musk are already a pivot.
  - ra7 5y ago
    Their radar removal was baffling. There were rumors (perhaps Musk's tweets?) of Tesla investigating 4D imaging radars to replace their really old Continental radars, but they suddenly decided to remove it altogether. Many have attributed it to chip shortage and yet again Musk using vision-only as an excuse for removal.
    - YZF 5y ago
      My money is on chip shortage. There were some real problems with the radar (like reflections from overpasses) though. I think not being able to ship cars because not enough radars is what forced this decision though (vs. trying to fix the radar and/or the way it's fused with the vision).

ra7 5y ago

Lidar was expensive back then and would've added huge costs to the vehicles. Not to mention, it looked ugly on consumer cars. Elon conveniently used "humans use only vision" as an excuse and promised every Tesla has "sufficient" hardware for full autonomy. It's that premature promise that doesn't let them add sensors even now (and perhaps Elon's ego) without breaking trust and/or eating big costs for retrofitting. In short, Elon made a high risk bet that vision-only would be enough and so far has been proven horribly wrong. But I've got to say, it was brilliantly executed because it gave Tesla mindshare as a tech company, drove sales and contributed massively to their insane valuation.

LegitShady 5y ago
Tesla pivoted to video only. They originally tried with radar as well. So any such statements by musk are already a pivot.
- ra7 5y ago
  Their radar removal was baffling. There were rumors (perhaps Musk's tweets?) of Tesla investigating 4D imaging radars to replace their really old Continental radars, but they suddenly decided to remove it altogether. Many have attributed it to chip shortage and yet again Musk using vision-only as an excuse for removal.
  - YZF 5y ago
    My money is on chip shortage. There were some real problems with the radar (like reflections from overpasses) though. I think not being able to ship cars because not enough radars is what forced this decision though (vs. trying to fix the radar and/or the way it's fused with the vision).