[xiphias2]

,,Lidar might become so affordable by the time camera-only makes substantial progress that by that point it was much more efficient to just have been developing with Lidar from the start.''

Tesla and Comma are already making profit with great margins that they needed a lot when they started developing self driving capabilities. Waymo is using Google's coffers, but so far they lost billions of dollars that they have to get back.

Regarding Lidar I wouldn't be surprised to see it in the Robotaxi that comes out in 1-2 years from Tesla, but maybe it would be a PR nightmare at this point.

[zarzavat]

The problem with Lidar is that it doesn’t work well in bad weather. So it’s not the “endgame” technology - that’s vision. It’s a bridging technology. Whether that bridge is needed today is an open question.

[sangnoir]

> The problem with Lidar is that it doesn’t work well in bad weather

Cameras don't work well in bad weather either.