If your vision is good enough to drive in rain/snow/fog, you don't need lidar in clear conditions. If you planned to spend $10B on vision and $10B on lidar — you would be better off spending $20B on better vision.

We have actual proof this isn’t true. Waymo is light years ahead of Tesla despite spending less.

Tesla is spending upwards of $6B/year to Waymo’s $1.5B. Only one of these companies makes an autonomous robotaxi that’s actually autonomous.

It still infuriates me that Tesla went so long being able to call their feature “auto pilot.“ Then they had the audacity to call it user error when people thought the car would automatically pilot itself.

Yes, but how much of that is due to the lidar vs camera choice?

> If yo[u can] drive in rain/snow/fog, you don't need lidar in clear conditions

Of course you do, you're driving at much higher speeds and so is the surrounding traffic. You can't just guess what you might be looking at, you have to make clear decisions promptly. Lidar is excellent in that case.