Andrej did get around to answering the original question, he just wanted to say more, to put it into a bigger frame with more context. I had the same "weasling"

Andrej did get around to answering the original question, he just wanted to say more, to put it into a bigger frame with more context. I had the same "weasling" concern at first; but his answer was more or less "You lose more than you gain, but yes there was a small delta; in exchange for which any organization would take on not just an economic hit but a lot of additional opportunities for process and maintenance errors; plus distracting the team." So he'll agree that in an ideal world you'd want 'em, just not want 'em that much; but in the real world, more geegaws that aren't really pulling their weight are a terrible idea. Although he didn't explicitly say so, neither his answer nor Elon's "take it out 'cause you can always put it back in if it turns out you really need it" philosophy absolutely rule out lidar coming back in the future if some remaining edge case just requires it. Clearly he thinks this is quite unlikely, however.