in 2010s Tesla had a choice:

- Equip every car it manufactures with stereoscopic self driving, or

- Have a modest test fleet of lidar-based cars.

Those were the choices. It could not afford to put lidar in every tesla since it was not yet self driving.

I suspect the plan all along has been to add lidar as true self driving was added. Then it would be worth the extra cost.

I think his actions are pretty optimal, and perfectly aligned with this strategy. That said, I think there are a great many edge cases they must solve to catch up to waymo.