[alicorn]

This baffles me as well. The technology to solve so many problems hard to approach with other tools is right there, why not use it.

[agildehaus]

LIDAR also provides more accurate data than stereo cameras could ever hope to achieve. Why not use it? Why limit ourselves to what humans have?

[sagarm]

Cost. Tesla has to sell cars to price-sensitive consumers. Adding a LIDAR would likely increase the price significantly. Given their business model, they basically have to argue that LIDAR is not necessary.

[lars_thomas]

I agree that when Tesla made their first promises of delivering FSD HW (just add SW a little bit later) reasonably priced solid state lidars were not available. So a story had to be made 'humans have eyes and they can drive, lidar is not needed'. Super hard to back now when they sold FSD to so many customers still waiting for the SW update.

[uncoder0]

I think this right here is the issue. They've backed themselves into the corner of 'We Don't need LIDAR'. When we were scrapping together on a 75k budget we bought budget lidar with a 180 degree linear sweep and it cost ~5k, 14 years ago, from SICK and it still was better than a modern 2020 model Tesla is at detecting a white van crossing the road in broad daylight.