In a recent No Priors podcast with the Waymo Co-CEO Dmitri Dolgov, he talks about how they evaluated just driving with cameras and how it isn't good enough for full autonomy and doesn't meet their bar for safety [1].

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6RndtrwJKE&t=1119s

They went deep down the wrong path and need to justify their mistake. Waymo will be killed off any day now.