No you are right, the economics of LIDAR could turn out to be insignificant over another decade of serious manufacturing investment in China. But Elon is a naive tech optimist like many of us engineers, so 5-6yrs ago he played the risky hand hoping that vision only would work out if they invested hard into it.
Back then Comma AI did the same thing choosing cheap cameras, Geohot the founder is similar to Elon being someone who prefers bucking trends and taking risks. He made a good public argument around that time for using Cameras and betting on more data = better output. And I guess Elon thought so too. It also happened to involve less hardware engineering and let them focus on software. Which is an easier decision as a business.
If it doesn’t work out I’m sure it will die a quick death and LIDAR will take over. State regulators won’t tolerate it long.
Back then Comma AI did the same thing choosing cheap cameras, Geohot the founder is similar to Elon being someone who prefers bucking trends and taking risks. He made a good public argument around that time for using Cameras and betting on more data = better output. And I guess Elon thought so too. It also happened to involve less hardware engineering and let them focus on software. Which is an easier decision as a business.
If it doesn’t work out I’m sure it will die a quick death and LIDAR will take over. State regulators won’t tolerate it long.