Lidar Got Cheap. Tesla Still Won't Use It.

Business Onion · 2:58

For seven years the argument about self-driving cars was an argument about money. The laser scanner on Google's first self-driving cars cost about $75,000 each — more than the car underneath it. That was Tesla's whole case for building self-driving cars out of cameras alone. Then China ended that argument. Chinese manufacturers industrialised the sensor and a compact automotive lidar now sells for a couple of hundred dollars. So why doesn't Tesla just add one? Because Elon Musk's objection was never price: a second sensor also gives you a second opinion, and when the cameras and the laser disagree the car has to decide which one to believe. Rivian is adding lidar to its R2 anyway, and its head of autonomy says Tesla's position isn't "fully explainable just from an engineering point of view." Part 3 of 3. Numbers & sources: the ~$75,000 early lidar figure is Waymo's own stated cost for the sensor on Google's first self-driving cars; current compact automotive lidar pricing is from Chinese manufacturer reporting (2025-26). Tesla's ~380,000 cumulative driverless miles are from Tesla's July 2026 earnings call; the ~1,400-miles-between-critical-interventions figure is from independent community trackers, not Tesla. Waymo's 220 million driverless miles are Waymo's own published figure. Baidu's ~350,000 weekly rides are from Baidu's Q1 2026 results.