You didn't look very hard. The Mercedes 2022+ EQS, S class, Volvo XC90... 1. It's not really a contest. Lidar is measurably better. 2. Error bars in perceptio

You didn't look very hard. The Mercedes 2022+ EQS, S class, Volvo XC90... 1. It's not really a contest. Lidar is measurably better. 2. Error bars in perception tend to accumulate throughout the stack and manifest as serious errors like bad velocity estimates for stationary or slow moving vehicles. 3. LIDAR helps recognition too. Planning and pathing are both helped by LIDAR. Honestly, there aren't many other sensors on an AV with the same bang-for-the-buck as LIDAR. It's easily up there with cameras for "why would you even consider not having it?" for a modern driverless vehicle, which is why everyone operating driverless vehicles uses them (Waymo, Cruise, Mobileye, Baidu, etc).