Waymo uses lidar, radar, cameras, mics, and other sensors. They also have extra extraordinary geospatial data. And they have years of operational experience.

They also spend $1 billion a year on R&D. while they are probably at least break even on opex, they are continuing to invest.

There is no shortcut. The reason they have all of those sensors, and the tiny windshield wipers that keep them clean, is that they need them to make it work. They are on version 6 of their hardware. If it were possible to remove some of the sensors and retain the same level of safety, they would.

They seem to be getting pretty far with only vision, to be fair. Same with openpilot. Still, I cant help but agree. If you have access to beyond-human sensors and are able to do sensor fusion, then please do it. What's the point otherwise? saving a few hundred bucks per car?