It's possible that Tesla is not only failing to lead in the self-driving race, but they might be dead last. They're clearly behind Waymo, Zoox, and Cruise, and possibly others.
The decision to not use Lidar will really bite them back.
Lidar has gone a lot cheaper than it used to, and Tesla charges $10,000 to activate FSD, they should be able to afford to put some Lidar sensors.
Wasn't Waymo's stuff limited by the fact that they were (and remain to this day) only able to drive in places that have been pre-mapped? If this is wrong, I apologize, but that is my current understanding. Also I have heard that lidar has really bad issues in inclement weather where there's stuff like rain and snow. I'm not an expert by any stretch, but these concerns make me very skeptical about the comparisons made (in sunny California weather no less) in those tweets.
At least as far as the 2009 videos shown here are concerned, Waymo definitely relied on very detailed pre-mapping, so you're not wrong, but I still thought it was an interesting comparison, given how much AI in general has advanced over the last 10 years.