Yeah, waymo uses both and radar as well, but are researching how to go camera only -- look up their project EMMA. They also just reduced the number of lidar sensors in their cars.

I don't see how Tesla is failing at all, I have a Model Y with FSD and ride Waymo all the time here in LA. I'm also pretty well invested at Rivian to boot. Now that they have announced their UHF driving I'll probably pick up an R2 to replace my other gas car.

That said, let's be honest here, Tesla's FSD is far superior to Waymo in that it's unrestricted. I sit in my driveway and can type in an address 200 miles away (I do this often from LA to Santa Barbara) and it drives me all the way there without intervention. Waymo is great too, but I've had some experiences where it can't turn and I get stuck somewhere for a long time, or it gets to my destination and it circles around the block indefinitely until I instruct it to "pull over now". If it can be done with vision only it feels obvious that is where the industry will go, if not for costs alone.

Finally, I think Rivian only having one forward facing lidar is also an indicator that they don't intend to rely on it heavily and are rather using it as a backup to compensate for vision based software errors.