[kevinchen]

Most high end sensors, especially lidars, are targeted at L4 applications. Otherwise the price cannot be justified. It’s a safe bet that sensor makers are including AV developers in their market research.

For lidar, the range is also limited by power limits + physics, which cannot be overcome by increasing money/power/device size. Some dependencies on semiconductor manufacturing tech or better signal processing might be possible to solve with more money.

[zbrozek]

LiDAR transmit power is practically only limited by eye safety. And retinas are fixed size while the aperture of your transceiver isn't. Get a big lens and you can transmit a lot of power and collect a lot of reflected photos.