Tesla LIDAR Debate
Comments focus on Tesla's decision to use cameras, radar, and ultrasonics instead of LIDAR for autonomous driving, debating its effectiveness, limitations in various conditions, and comparisons to competitors like Waymo and Uber.
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Tesla does not use lidar, only regular cameras.
AFAIK, tesla doesn't use lidars. This one has at least 2 lidars, so there's that.
I'm guessing tesla's don't use a LIDAR?
AFAIK Tesla uses cameras instead of LIDAR because LIDAR, by itself, will not be able to tell you what a thing is. It cannot tell you, for example, whether the thing standing at the side of the road is a stationary trash can or a human about to cross the road. Hence you have to solve vision anyway. And if you have to solve vision, you might as well go all in on cameras.
Tesla does not use LIDAR, they use radar.
Well we know that vision works based on human experience. So few years ago it was a reasonable bet that cameras alone could solve this. The problem with Tesla is that they still continue to insist on that after it became apparent that vision alone with the current tech and machine learning does not work. They even do not want to use a radar again even if the radar does not cost much and is very beneficial for safety.
Tesla uses only cameras, which sounds crazy (reflections, direct sunlight disturbances, fog , smoke, etc.LiDAR, radar assistance feels crucialhttps://fortune.com/2025/08/15/waymo-srikanth-thirumalai-int...
Ubers self-driving cars have LIDAR. Tesla autopilot is fully based on view from cameras that can be obstructed.
It's not like they only have cameras, they also have radar and ultrasonic sensors. Here is a good article on this topic: https://cleantechnica.com/2016/07/29/tesla-google-disagree-l...
Tesla seem to think they'll be OK with radar and cameras, and not lidar - that's the current hardware revision.