[dotancohen]

  > Lidar can be added for hundreds of dollars per car.

Surprisingly, many production vehicles have a manufacturer profit under one thousand dollars. So that LIDAR would eat a significant portion of the margin on the vehicle.

[matthewdgreen]

But that’s sort of the point of the business model. Getting safe fully-self driving vehicles appears to require a better platform, given today’s limitations. You can achieve that better platform financially in a fleet vehicle where the cost of the sensors can be amortized over many rides, and the “FSD” capability translates directly into revenue. You can’t put an adequate sensor platform into a consumer vehicle today, which is what Tesla tried to promise and failed to deliver. Maybe someday it will be possible, but the appropriate strategy is to wait until that’s possible before selling products to the consumer market.