Elon may have been technically correct about 'if humans can do it with vision only then theres no reason why vision-only cannot work' but turned out to be the wrong strategy for learning how to get there. lidar gives you a constant stream of data to check your vision yourself against and interatively learn. Once trained you turn it off. whereas teslas strategy ended up having to rely on human drivers for error feedback which made the learning loop way longer.
You seem to be baking-in the assumption that extreme precision is what can make the difference when driving a car, but I put to you that the vast, vast majority of human-at-fault accidents are not due to the precision being slightly off.
It will be logic and driving behavior that makes the difference between Waymo/Tesla/others rather than whether the perception accuracy is micron level or not.
There's still a long, long way to go. Waymo has proven it can operate a high-priced service in a handful of cities in good weather, it hasn't yet demonstrated true scale and affordability.
