When Tesla debuted, the cost of batteries made electric cars more like an expensive novelty. The Tesla roadster certainly was fun, but it wasn't a practical car for day-to-day use.

Of course, things have changed.

Had Tesla gone all-in on Lidar, they could have turned the technology into a commodity, they are a trillion dollar company producing a million cars a year. Lidar is already present on cheap robot vacuum cleaners, and we have time-of-flight cameras in smartphones, I don't believe it would have been a problem to equip $50k cars with Lidar.