> purely aesthetic reasons

This is huge though.

People aren't setting them on fire during protests, and if an FSD Tesla plows into a farmers market, it might not even make the news.

People hate tech so much that self-driving companies with easy-to-spot cars have had to shut down after just a few mistakes.

Disguising Teslas as plain old regular human-driven cars is a great idea and I wouldn't be surprised if they win the market because of this. Even if they suck at driving.

> The cost is not even that significant compared to the overall cost of a Tesla.

That’s true now, but when they first debuted they would have doubled the cost of the car.

That one was motivated by the need of controlling the app distribution channel, just like they keep the web as a second class citizen in their ecosystem nowadays.

Years ago he called lidar a crutch...

And I agree, it is. Clearly it is theoretically possible without.

But when you can't walk at all, a crutch might be just what you need to get going before you can do it without the crutch!

he didn't refuse it. MobileEye or whoever cut Tesla off because they were using the lidar sensors in a way he didn't approve. From there he got mad and said "no more lidar!"

His stated reason was that he wanted the team focused on the driving problem, not sensor fusion "now you have two problems" problems. People assumed cost was the real reason, but it seems unfair to blame him for what people assumed. Don't get me wrong, I don't like him either, but that's not due to his autonomous driving leadership decisions, it's because of shitting up twitter, shitting up US elections with handouts, shitting up the US government with DOGE, seeking Epstein's "wildest party," DARVO every day, and so much more.

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