Elon Musk doesn’t like lidar, the laser sensor that is driving many companies’ autonomous driving ambitions. He previously called it a “crutch” and said any company that relies on lidar for its autonomous capabilities is “doomed to fail.”
Well, apparently Tesla is stocking up on crutches.
In its quarterly earnings report released today, Orlando-based lidar maker Luminar announced that Tesla was its “largest LiDAR customer in the first quarter,” accounting for more than 10 percent of the company’s quarterly revenue. That represents a lidar value of about $2.1 million, based on Luminar’s quarterly revenue of $21 million.
Tesla is stocking up on crutches
It’s a remarkable turnaround for Tesla, which over the years has famously reduced the number of sensors it uses for its advanced driver-assistance features like Autopilot and full self-driving – features that Musk has consistently sold as a precursor to a fully autonomous vehicle fleet. Later this year, Tesla is expected to unveil a robotaxi prototype, on which Musk is betting the future of his company.
Musk’s lidar allergy was even evident during Tesla’s own quarterly earnings call, in which he boasted that its vehicles relied solely on camera-based vision systems to power their driver assistance features.
“It is clear that our solution can enable self-driving with a relatively inexpensive inference computer and standard cameras,” Musk said. “No lidars, no radars, ultrasound. Nothing.”
It’s a remarkable turnaround for Tesla
What Tesla will do with $2.1 million worth of Luminar lidar remains unclear. Luminar spokesman Milin Mehta declined to comment and Tesla has not officially responded to reporters’ inquiries since 2019.
When I asked Luminar founder and CEO Austin Russell specifically about the Tesla deal in 2021, he declined to comment, citing “customer confidentiality.” He noted that Luminar sells its older Hydra lidar units to some customers that do “testing, development… data collection, [and] Benchmarking.”
Even though Tesla is using Luminar’s lidar to validate its Full Self-Driving feature in preparation for launching a robotaxi, this is still the case a lot of lidar. According to Luminar, individual lidar sensors, including software, cost around $1,000. Did Tesla buy 2,100 Lidars for its vehicles? Perhaps! The company is quietly operating an autonomous test fleet in a number of cities, including San Francisco and Las Vegas. Will these company-owned vehicles be retrofitted with Luminar’s lidar? If so, people will notice – just like they noticed that one Model Y in Florida a few years ago. We will know soon enough whether these vehicles will hit the road.
It seems clear that Tesla is changing its mind on lidar, even if Musk is still publicly against lidar. At some point, the CEO himself may be forced to swallow his pride and admit that lasers are indeed the solution.