It is a gamble, but also betting on LIDAR is a gamble, as it could be a pit to fall in if it turns out not to be beneficial. The big benefit of LIDAR is, it giv

It is a gamble, but also betting on LIDAR is a gamble, as it could be a pit to fall in if it turns out not to be beneficial. The big benefit of LIDAR is, it gives you very good 3D data about your environment. Unfortunately, it completely misses a lot of information which is essential for driving and actually a lot of our traffic rules are based on things which you cannot detected with LIDAR: traffic signs, traffic lights and so on (you could detect the sign itself with high precision, but not what it reads). This means, LIDAR could just be additional sensor data augmenting the camera information. But it adds a huge cognitive load when combining the data. Besides the costs of the LIDAR system itself, it adds to the computational costs. Once the 3D-data from the cameras only is "good enough", you might get better results by spending the available compute resources rather on improving the analysis of the visual data alone. And the 3D data Tesla seems to be getting from the cameras seems to be pretty good already. The big elephant in the room isn't to recognize a road sign correctly, it is to decide, whether it applies to the car or a different lane, road or whether it is actually a burger king logo :). There LIDAR might be just a distraction. It will be interesting to see how the autonomic car race will pan out. Especially, when competitors are using different strategies. That als ensures, that not everyone is going into the wrong direction.