It seems difficult to tell who is the “furthest ahead” because it’s a pretty complex race.
For starters, we can’t even say with certainty who all of the competitors are. Some are very quiet or at early stages but could be working on a breakthrough problem that turns out to be a pivot point.
Some are specializing. Who is going to scale up the best and most cost efficient solid state lidar? There’s a whole list of key problems being worked on.
Do you mean hardware or software? Just the algorithms are a huge piece. Just hardware is a huge pieces.
Beyond price and performance, it’s common that unforeseen factors end up being important in determining who becomes the most successful in selling traditional manufacturers components or whole systems. Surely we don’t realize all of them yet.
Also there is so much still being held close to the vest. These guys are keeping lots of secrets about how far along they are truly, roadblocks, etc.