Elon Muskās polarizing political actions since acquiring Twitter, later rebranded X, in 2022 dramatically hurt the automakerās U.S. sales, underscoring how deeply its fortunes are intertwined with the billionaireās persona.
The findings quantify for the first time how the political actions of the worldās wealthiest person ā including his role in U.S. President Donald Trumpās administration ā may have cost Tesla billions in lost vehicle sales while benefiting rival electric carmakers.
Teslaās U.S. sales would have been between 67% and 83% higher, or about 1 million to 1.26 million additional vehicles, from October 2022 to April 2025, had it not been for what researchers call the āMusk partisan effect,ā according to a working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research by Yale University economists.
Tesla has never used lidar. As the other person said, they did use radar and ultrasonic detectors until covid supply chain issues when they decided to go camera only.
I guess not, but affordable small and very simple LiDAR range finders (ToF) have been around for a while. Not the fancy spinning scanners on Waymo and military robots. More like parking sensors and measuring tools.
I remember when the Israeli company that was developing Teslaās first automation systems dropped them because it didnāt like the reliance on cameras only that Musk was insisting on.
Edit: removed useless link and provided Wikipedia page with better history of the hardware used. Mobileye dropped Tesla in 2016. Funny enough they were developing Lidar after dropping Tesla, but are more recently going to a camera only approach too. Iām still skeptical any firm will succeed with only mostly visible spectrum photons and have a safe product. But as secondary backup safety devices Iām ok with them. They shouldnāt be allowed to call any of it autodriving or autopilot though.
They removed plastic hooks from the frunk to save two cents. Same with rain detectors on windshield for auto wipers.
Wait until you see the new āstandardā model Frunks. The couldnāt be bothered to cover the wheel wells.
Pass.