[imtringued]

The worst case scenario is that LIDAR is a rapidly falling extra cost for zero benefit? Sounds like it's a good idea to invest into cheap LIDAR just in case the worst case doesn't happen. Even better, you can get a head start by investing in the solution early and abandon it when it has obsolete.

By the way, Tesla engineers secretly trained their vision systems using LIDAR data because that's how you get training data. When Elon Musk found out, he fired them.

Finally, your premise is nonsensical. Using end to end learning for self driving sounds batshit crazy to me. Traffic rules are very rigid and differ depending on the location. Tesla's self driving solution gets you ticketed for traffic violations in China. Machine learning is generally used to "parse" the sensor output into a machine representation and then classical algorithms do most of the work.

The rationale for being against LIDAR seems to be "Elon Musk said LIDAR is bad" and is not based on any deficiency in LIDAR technology.