In general, I think autopilot is a controversy magnet. From its name to its seemingly speedy initial rollout, to the highly publicized Harry Potter death, to the recent crash. Not to mention, anything to do with Musk and his futuristic ideas gets huge play in the press, though the actual reality is the features are quite slowly rolling out and are fairly underwhelming given the hype.
Also, the hype about this being self-driving: this is basically only a highway assist system, there are numerous challenges around the ~30 MPH, suburban/urban driving challenge to overcome. At that speed range in particular, I think lidar could be useful to Tesla, since it'd provide even further data in a variety of conditions, thus redundancy and more potential for completely safe driving in this most tricky and unsafe speed range where one must interact with pedestrians, bikes, and various things entering the roadway.