According to [1] Waymo produces its own lidars. In 2017 it costed $7500 without being mass produced.

Edit: wording.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2017/1/8/14206084/google-waymo-self...

I guess I CAN afford a Tesla...

I was just answering to the claim "when just the lidar for a waymo car costs more than the entire tesla vehicle". Which is clearly wrong.

The tesla you can afford still does not have self driving capabilities either btw.

I made this joke as I found disparity between the message its reply humorous. If you disagree, feel free to ignore my comment. That aside, it is quite cool how Waymo cut costs by 90%: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/01/googles-waymo-invests-i... (perhaps there are newer developments of which I am not aware). The old numbers indeed exceed the price of most teslas...

I see, I missed the joke I think, reading again, it was quite obvious, sorry about that.

All the Waymo vans I've seen have had multiple lidar sensors, I think 4?

Can you go out and buy a fully self driving Tesla today? Because that would be the relevant comparison.

Can you buy any sort of waymo at all?

LIDAR will get cheaper and smaller though. I think Tesla’s argument that cameras+ML+tons of data>LIDAR is more compelling.

The real question is cameras + ML + tons of data vs LIDAR + cameras + ML + tons of data

It will still be power hungry and mess up aerodynamics even if it is smaller. Tesla is looking at the entire picture of autonomous + EV which IMO is a better strategy.