stderr : It's not fair because the Tesla is electric

10baggerbamm OP stderr : what's the matter you afraid of a little battery powered car.. any others are hand built top of the food chain supercars.

Dan’l : The problems of LiDAR cost (whether it is Waymo’s vehicles, or the lack thereof with Tesla’s) could be solved by third parties (e.g., $Luminar Technologies (LAZR.US)$  now comes standard on one “uncrashable” Volvo, with another model already in the works).
We’re also gonna see a huge increase in AI (and the computing power it requires) that comes built into our cars, and that ain’t gonna be $NVIDIA (NVDA.US)$  or $Alphabet-C (GOOG.US)$  either… there’s small moats around those in these spaces, with alternatives that could provide viable solutions and formidable competition in relatively no time at all.
There’s enormous cost and added risk to them that go first, including the potential of becoming little more than mostly forgotten historical footnotes.

bullrider_21 OP Dan’l : With new technology, lidar cost will come down and the size will be reduced.
Tesla's camera-only system has its problems. And it has no redundancy. If it fails, a crash will result. The problems may be solved with lidars.