[servo_sausage]

Useful but not at all required. Camera + radar is sufficient for driving, and camera+ USS is fine for parking.

Radar is just cheaper than the number of cameras and compute, it's also not really a strict requirement.

Look at how the current cars fuck up, it's mostly navigation, context understanding, and tight manoeuvres. Lidar gives you very little in these areas

[UltraSane]

All of the actually WORKING self driving systems use LIDAR. This is not a coincidence.

[servo_sausage]

I work with programs approaching L3+ from L2, with the requirement that the system works for 99% of roads (not tesla before people start fixating on that).

We find that the cases where lidar really helps are in gathering training data, parking, and if focused enough some long distance precision.

None of these have been instrumental in a final product; personally I suspect that many of the cars including lidar use it for data collection and edge cases more than as part of the driving perception model.

[small_model]

Like Waymo? (https://dmnews.co.uk/waymo-robotaxi-spotted-unable-to-cross-...) 17 years after betting the farm on LIDAR the solution fails to navigate a puddle. Sorry but they bet on the wrong technology, Tesla has overtaken them with multi camera and NN solution.