Indeed. There's also a slightly less charitable interpretation–Tesla could't ship every car with LIDAR for cost reasons, so they're strongly incentivized to cla

Indeed. There's also a slightly less charitable interpretation–Tesla could't ship every car with LIDAR for cost reasons, so they're strongly incentivized to claim they don't need it. That said, I don't think Tesla are wrong. If Tesla can deploy MobilEye-level automatic visual mapping (see https://youtu.be/GQ15HWCw_Ic?t=1381 https://youtu.be/GQ15HWCw_Ic?t=1381) this can obviate the need for LIDAR-based localization and dramatically improve their perception systems (by having very good prior information about all static obstacles, such as lane dividers). Dynamic obstacle detection will still be worse than it would be with a vision+LIDAR approach, but not that much worse. Having superhuman ability along two axes (map-based priors and alertness / reaction time) is likely sufficient to drive better than humans, even if several remaining axes (dynamic obstacle detection and prediction) are worse. Additionally, Tesla is not (AFAIK) using any structure-from-motion (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KT2KsN7yKo0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KT2KsN7yKo0) or stereo-vision (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SskSDjUG8ZY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SskSDjUG8ZY) techniques, but there's a chance that these could also improve perception, especially in tough cases where a single frame is not enough for good detection (e.g. white semi in sunlight). LIDAR is not being used in the (compared to Tesla) small-scale AV systems of Waymo, Cruise, Aurora et. al because it's essential, but rather because it's convenient, and because the companies producing those systems want to give their AVs every advantage at any cost. I fully expect Tesla (and MobilEye) to do superhuman self driving without LIDAR, but it will take longer (i.e. not by EOY).