To me, the revolution that actually mattered the most was the cell phone supply chain revolution (if you can call it that). That is what allowed these companies to equip their vehicles with cheap cameras, radar, and eventually LiDAR.
> I don't believe that. He ultimately has to be anti-LiDAR because putting LiDAR on every Tesla is simply not feasible nor compatible with his plan to mass gather training data, so he has to justify it somehow.
Why is using Lidar not compatible with mass gather training data?
Also he recently said they wouldn't use Lidar even if it's free. He didn't leave the door open for when the price goes down sufficiently. He could be wrong obviously, but I don't think he is in denial.
https://www.tesla.com/support/full-self-driving-computer
I suppose they wouldn't have any problem asking for Lidar installation if that were to be required?
I don't believe that. He ultimately has to be anti-LiDAR because putting LiDAR on every Tesla is simply not feasible nor compatible with his plan to mass gather training data, so he has to justify it somehow.
What you're missing is that it's all moot if your self-driving car does not have a 0% failure rate, or close enough to 0% that it rounds down to 0 accidents. As soon as you have real accidents, you are done. Look at Uber. The one death completely ended their self driving unit.
So yes, it may seem cool to just go with the flow and rush things, but I get the feeling that this will be like the tortoise and the hare. Eventually LiDAR will be cheap, and Tesla will be stuck with years of useless training data.