Elon Musk Called Waymo's Sensor A Fool's Errand. Then He Removed The Radar Too.

Business Onion · 2:50

On April 22nd, 2019, Elon Musk told a room of investors that the most expensive sensor in self-driving was a waste of money. "Lidar is a fool's errand. Anyone relying on lidar is doomed." The bet is not stupid: a sensor package that costs six figures can sit on a research fleet forever, but it cannot sit on a car someone buys in a showroom — and Tesla had ten million cars on the road collecting camera data nobody else could buy. But when Musk ordered radar stripped out in 2021, engineers told the Washington Post they were aghast. One internal document making their case was titled, simply, "Radar Saves Us." Federal regulators have since asked Tesla to hand it over. Part 2 of 3. Follow for the rest of the series. Numbers & sources: Waymo's 500,000 paid rides/week and Alphabet's Other Bets results ($411M revenue, $2.1B operating loss) are from Alphabet's Q1 2026 earnings release. Tesla's ~380,000 cumulative driverless miles are from Tesla's July 2026 earnings call. Baidu's ~350,000 weekly rides are from Baidu's Q1 2026 results. Waymo's sensor counts are from Waymo's own 6th-generation Driver announcement. Per-vehicle costs are third-party estimates and are not used in the narration.