I take it they aren't autonomous driving videos? My concern isn't really with what the car sees but how it reacts to unfamiliar scenarios. There are many edge case scenarios that us humans can't react to because there just isn't a logically correct maneuver. How do you tell a machine what to do when there is no correct answer? When none of the choices don't end up in catastrophe.
Elon Musk had a very negative view of lidar, but he didn't really explain himself very completely.
Lidar sensors are around $10k and up, and the waymo cars I've seen have many of them.
Additionally, they only sort of say how far away things are, which sort of overlaps with the ultrasonics and radar.
So, maybe the roi on lidar would not be great.
That said, the engineer in me thinks lidar would be a nice add-on (sensor fusion). But it depends on someone actually
shipping one of those dirt cheap solid state sensors we see in press releases (but not in real life yet).
I disagree that you need a machine to understand ethics for FSD to come to fruition. Most humans would not be making ethical decisions in split second emergency situations.
If humans are driving around somewhat successfully without being able to handle all edgecases, as long as the a machine can do as good a job or better it is a viable alternative to human drivers.
The important distinction though is that a human can be held liable and punished for their erroneous (re)action but a machine cannot.
Do you hold the owner, manufacturer, or insurer responsible to right the wrongs where an autonomous vehicle is at fault?
I would expect the insurers and manufacturers to use contractual terms that absolves them of all liabilities where the car's occupant isn't paying attention to the road.