What a closed-minded article! The real hard part here was to solve self-driving, which is what Waymo focused on, and is at L4 already (or close enough to it).

The other points that the author raises are obvious things known for a decade, and Waymo doesn't even have to solve them, unless it really wants to.

- The cost of Lidar has fallen a lot already, and is likely to continue to do so.

- Waymo doesn't have to manufacture cars at scale. Carmakers would love to license FSD tech from Waymo and sell premium cars. I would happily buy such a car for $100k.

- Uber/Lyft will fight over themselves to license the FSD tech, Waymo has no need to build its own taxi services.