> I do wonder if, deep down, Tesla's decision is rooted in aesthetics.

I've always read it as Tesla trying to do a paradigm leap. It seems everyone in self-driving knows you can do it pretty well with a huge variety of sensors, but what if you got extremely good at only camera-based then added in the new sensors.

Basically, if you can establish that the very worst case works, you can add in more sensors to go beyond that and have the cars become superhuman rather than having to depend on all sensors to consistently be working to have a safe vehicle.