The industry is split. Waymo and Cruise bet on LiDAR + radar + cameras. Tesla bets on cameras alone with neural nets. In 2026, both work — but the economics are diverging.
LiDAR gives millimeter-accurate 3D points even at night. New solid-state units cost $250 (down from $7,500 in 2020) and see 200m. Waymo's 6th-gen uses 4 LiDARs for redundancy.
Tesla's 8 cameras cost ~$150 total. With 6M cars collecting data, its transformer learns edge cases faster. But vision struggles in heavy rain/fog where LiDAR excels.
Verdict: Robotaxis will stay LiDAR for safety redundancy; consumer cars will go vision-only for cost.
SYLVIE PIPKIN