Tesla May Have Taken Wrong Turn On Lidar

  • A lidar is a light-emitting radar which provides a 3D image of a car’s environment, necessary for autonomous vehicles (AV), but lidars are costly.
  • Tesla, alone among car manufacturers, is dispensing with a lidar on its road to AVs.
  • This forces much higher data generation, collection and computation on Tesla in order to improve the algorithms producing a 3D picture from other sensors.
  • While that might be a viable road, recent improvements and dramatic cost reductions of lidars could force Tesla to a costly technological U-turn.

Source: Tesla May Have Taken Wrong Turn On Lidar – Tesla Motors (NASDAQ:TSLA) | Seeking Alpha