Elon Musk Says Tesla Doesn't Need Lidar Because 'People Don't Shoot Lasers Out Of Their Eyes' After YouTubers Put His Cars Through Wylie E. Coyote Tests

What Happened: Musk took to X, formerly Twitter, to repetition a cardinal pillar of Tesla's self-driving vision: cameras and AI are each you need.

"People don't sprout lasers retired of their eyes to drive," Musk wrote, sharing an aged clip from Tesla's 2019 Autonomy Day. "Just effort Tesla self-driving today, which conscionable uses cameras and AI, and you volition understand."

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In the video, Musk called LiDAR a "fool's errand," saying, "Anyone relying connected LiDAR is doomed. Doomed! Expensive sensors that are unnecessary... similar having a full clump of costly appendices."

Unlike competitors specified arsenic Alphabet Inc.'s (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Waymo and General Motors Co.'s (NYSE:GM) Cruise, Tesla has famously avoided utilizing LiDAR, opting alternatively for a vision-based system.

However, successful a twist, a 2024 net study from LiDAR shaper Luminar revealed that Tesla had softly go its biggest customer. The EV elephantine accounted for implicit 10% of Luminar's first-quarter revenue, totaling much than $2 million.

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Why It's Important: Musk's latest connection connected LiDAR came conscionable weeks aft a YouTube video by Mark Rober, known for his subject and engineering experiments, surfaced.

The video tested Tesla's camera-only Autopilot/FSD strategy against a LiDAR-based setup powered by Luminar's technology.

The results indicated that the LiDAR strategy outperformed the camera-based approach, chiefly owed to its superior show successful fog and rain, wherever visibility is reduced.