>However, in the unlikely scenario that 2D videos are sufficient for L5 self-driving, Tesla wins BIG. No one will be even close, especially due to the scale of 2D data that they have gathered.

Potentially Tesla's 2D data lead means they will still be the leader even if the compute resources in the current cars isn't up to the task, and maybe even if they have to add additional sensors like lidar. They can probably retrain their models and still get a lot of out of it.

My personal guess is that full 3D lidar isn't needed, but some additional cameras and other cheap sensors probably are. There's a ton of stuff that costs a fraction of the cost of lidar that might fill in the gaps.