I wasn't arguing Tesla is ahead of Waymo? Nor do I think they are. All I was arguing was that it makes sense from the perspective of a consumer automobile maker to not use lidar.

I don't think Tesla is that far behind Waymo though given Waymo has had a significant head start, the fact Waymo has always been a taxi-first product, and given they're using significantly more expensive tech than Tesla is.

Additionally, it's not like this is a lidar vs cameras debate. Waymo also uses and needs cameras for FSD for the reasons I mentioned, but they supplement their robotaxis with lidar for accuracy and redundancy.

My guess is that Tesla will experiment with lidar on their robotaxis this year because design decisions should differ from those of a consumer automobile. But I could be wrong because if Tesla wants FSD to work well on visually appealing and affordable consumer vehicles then they'll probably have to solve some of the additional challenges with with a camera-only FSD system. I think it will depend on how much Elon decides Tesla needs to pivot into robotaxis.

Either way, what is undebatable is that you can't drive with lidar only. If the weather is so bad that cameras are useless then Waymos are also useless.