Last I heard publicly, Waymo had gotten their LIDAR kit to under $10k. And still dropping.

You're telling me that a new non-driverless car for say, $15k would outsell a (otherwise identical) driverless car for $25k? The value added by driverless is well above the cost of LIDAR.

Achieving marketable driverlessness first is going to be way more important than cutting costs slightly. Everyone else who doesn't achieve it early is going to be hosed, and no amount of cost cutting will help. They'll just become suppliers or licensees for whoever achieves and patents it first, contractually ceding the lion's share of the profits

No..I was referring to Tesla, since they are often called out for not using LIDAR. They are, however, selling direct to consumers...where that $10k matters a lot, right now.

Waymo is likely either targeting operators (not end consumers) or at least waiting until LIDAR is much cheaper before they do.

Oh, I see. Yeah I agree it would have been silly of Tesla to add LIDAR to the cars currently on the market, just for the sake of better training data.