A lot of LIDAR fans here for some reason, but you’re absolutely right.

There’s just not a good amount of evidence pointing that accurate depth perception only obtained through LIDAR is required for self driving, and it also won’t solve the complex navigation of a real world scenario. A set of visible spectrum cameras over time can reconstruct a 3D environment well enough for navigation and it’s quite literally what Tesla’s FSD does.

I don’t know why someone would still say it’s not possible when we already have an example running in production.

“But Tesla FSD has a high disengagement rate” - for now, yes. But these scenarios are more often possible to be solved by high definition maps than by LIDAR. For anyone that disagrees, go to youtube, choose a recent video of Tesla’s FSD and try to find a scenario where a disengagement would have been avoided by LIDAR only.

There are many parts missing for a complete autonomous driving experience. LIDAR is not one of them.