Part 6/15:
Many industry players depend on synthetic data and sophisticated sensors like lidar to facilitate autonomous navigation. Lidar, which employs laser sensors to perceive the vehicle's surroundings, has been a mainstay in many autonomous vehicle systems. However, Elon Musk, Tesla's CEO, has publicly criticized lidar as an expensive and unnecessary hardware solution, calling it “a fool’s errand” and a “ridiculous” expense for the added complexity it introduces. Musk argues that lidar's multiple inputs can sometimes conflict with camera data, increasing system complexity without delivering proportional benefits.