As Elon Musk doubles down on plans to turn Tesla into a robotaxi powerhouse, he’s maintained that cameras are the only sensors self-driving vehicles need, adamantly shunning the use of laser lidar that’s standard gear for autonomous cars and trucks operated by Waymo and other companies. But that hasn’t prevented the electric carmaker from buying lots of the high-tech 3D imaging devices this year.
Though Tesla’s impulsive billionaire has likened lidar to useless organs such as the human appendix and said companies using them are “doomed,” Luminar revealed on Tuesday that during the first quarter, Tesla’s purchases of the devices were a key driver of revenue.
The Orlando-based company said first-quarter revenue rose 45% from a year ago to $21 million, in line with its guidance. And though lidar sales to nonautomotive customers declined in the quarter, “this was offset by sensor sales to Tesla,” according to the shareholder letter. In fact, it “was our largest lidar customer in Q1 and comprised more than 10% of our revenue in the quarter,” Luminar said. That suggests Tesla bought several hundred, if not more than a thousand units so far this year.
That reference is the first official confirmation that, despite Musk’s comments, Tesla engineers appear to be using lidar as part of efforts to develop truly autonomous vehicles. Tesla didn’t respond to a request for comment on the matter.
It’s a curious wrinkle since just a few weeks ago, when Tesla released disappointing first-quarter results, Musk doubled down on his belief that lidar and radar are not necessary for AVs.
“It’s become very clear that the vision-based approach with end-to-end neural networks is the right solution for scalable autonomy,” he said on the April 23 results call. “It’s really how humans drive. Our entire road network is designed for biological neural nets and eyes. So naturally, cameras and digital neural nets are the solution to our current road system.”
Alphabet’s Waymo, General Motors-backed Cruise, Amazon’s Zoox and other companies hoping to perfect autonomous robotaxis all use multiple cameras, radar and lidar sensors to ensure vehicles can see their surroundings, pedestrians, other vehicles and road conditions in daylight or at night, in rain or fog. That’s something cameras aren’t always capable of.
“There’s no way that any car can do the dynamic task of driving in any environment just using computer vision. It’s impossible,” Missy Cummings, a George Mason University professor who recently served as an advisor to NHTSA on autonomous vehicles, recently told Forbes. “It simply does not have the ability to sense the world correctly. … For a car to rely solely on computer vision, people are gonna die.”
In addition to Tesla, Luminar supplies its sensors to automakers including Volvo and Mercedes-Benz. Its shares fell 1.2% to $1.65 in Nasdaq trading today, but were up 3% in after hours trading following the earnings release, which was after the market close.
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