Major manufacturers see it from the perspective that they don't have the deep technological expertise to pull off L4, and that acquiring it would take way too much money. Why do that when they can just partner with companies that are leading in the area, many of whom are VC-funded?

I side with Elon, who basically said that Lidar is a fools errand.

The only reason why Elon says this is to justify not including them in his cars, which is done for cost reasons. That's it. The leaders in the space are all using Lidar as part of a suite of sensors.

Tesla is basically not including a key took in its arsenal for self-driving. For good reasons: they are a car manufacturer, and Lidar isn't yet cheap enough that it makes sense to deploy it on a consumer product. But don't fall for Elon's hilarious excuse that the reason is because Lidar isn't good enough.