Elon Musk adamantly standing by improving radar even though it’s so close to lidar

In the past, Elon Musk has rejected Lidar, saying it’s unnecessary to achieve full driving autonomy. But in taking to his Twitter account between late Thursday night and early Friday morning, the Tesla CEO couldn’t help but announce improvements to the automaker’s radar … which isn’t Lidar, even though the end results sound awfully Lidar-like.

So, if the ramping up of radar brings Tesla’s technology that much closer to what Lidar would deliver, then why not just use Lidar? Perhaps, Musk just doesn’t want to give up his forward drive with radar and take steps back to include the same Lidar technology he has put down on several occasions.

For what it’s worth, Musk did back up his tweet with advantages that radar delivers over Lidar.

We wonder if Musk would ever cave in and just adopt Lidar as Tesla’s competition in self-driving technology — most prominently, Google — is doing.