I was thinking the same way a year ago and telling my fanboy tesla friend how stupid it was removing lidars etc., but being open minded and always looking to be challenged, I started researching what they are doing and how they are doing it, watch their AI day video (its old in AI terms but gives a good insight), and I eventually got what they’ve meant when saying lidar introduces noise compared to what they are doing right now. TLDR is they convert photons into a multistereoscopic camera and reconstructing the brain’s behavior towards objects and motion…the way they transform the image data into high quality 3d point clouds is really mindblowing, people outside of the 3d ecosystem cannot fully appreciate that, and its kind of sad.
The camera performance is like the newer starlight sensors in terms of seeing in the dark, and they seem to process from raw data. Essentially, once they crack all the quirks, I am now a firm beleiver that it will better than the average joe with limited angulars vision+rotating head vs. surround stereoscopic vision.
Not saying I 100% agree with launching a beta program in the wild like this, but to their defense, given the current government driving paperwork and legislation to insane levels of unproductivity, innovators and challengers kinda have to play it out like that if they want to disrupt sectors (in the end) for the better.
Not saying the end justifies the means, but I can understand the logic.