You seem very angry for some reason that I do not understand. Your emotional response is not backed up by facts.

Hotz can certainly be considered an expert as founder and president of commai.ai. Whether he is a loudmouth or not is less relevant.

The remark by Levandowski can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNgEG5rCav4

Whether these guys are ethical etc. is not of interest for this question.

> Elon really is alone in claiming that lidar isn’t needed for self-driving.

No, precisely not.