Tesla did, in fact, use "ground truth vehicles" - vehicles that were owned and operated by Tesla itself, and had high performance LIDARs installed. They were used to collect the data to train the "vision-only" system and verify its performance.

Reportedly, they no longer use this widely - but they still have some LIDAR-equipped "scout vehicles" they send into certain environments to collect extra data.

It seems like an own goal not to sell these to some interested and targeted customers then.

Who would buy those and why? They don't use LIDARs for better self-driving somehow. They're just data harvesting units with wheels. And I don't think there's a large and underserved market for LIDARs on wheels.

> Who would buy those and why? [...] They're just data harvesting units with wheels.

Tesla would subsidize them and offer them at the same price as non-LIDAR models, to select customers in target areas.

And yes, you answered the second part of your own question.