I think LIDAR will have a place, if they can get the per-sensor cost down to something reasonable (under $500.00 per sensor, for 3D 180 degree with at least 32

I think LIDAR will have a place, if they can get the per-sensor cost down to something reasonable (under $500.00 per sensor, for 3D 180 degree with at least 32 vertical res beams - or the equivalent). But I think first we'll see cars utilizing tech as described in this paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/1604.07316 https://arxiv.org/abs/1604.07316 ...and variations of it to handle other modeling and vision tasks. Self-driving vehicle systems are amazing complex; it won't ultimately be any single system or sensor, or piece of software or algorithm that solves the problem - it's going to be a complex mesh of all of them working in concert. And even then, there will be mistakes, injuries, and deaths unfortunately.