Comment by cr0sh

I think LIDAR will have a place, if they can get the per-sensor cost down to something reasonable (under $500.00 per sensor, for 3D 180 degree with at least 32 vertical res beams - or the equivalent).

But I think first we'll see cars utilizing tech as described in this paper:

https://arxiv.org/abs/1604.07316

...and variations of it to handle other modeling and vision tasks.

Self-driving vehicle systems are amazing complex; it won't ultimately be any single system or sensor, or piece of software or algorithm that solves the problem - it's going to be a complex mesh of all of them working in concert.

And even then, there will be mistakes, injuries, and deaths unfortunately.