The companies are stating that they won't be using LIDAR or Radar, and that cameras are enough.
Cameras tend to rely on markers of some sort - and in cases like the markers on the road were very misleading. Even a short-sighted beginner human driver who was told to carefully follow the lanes would have made the same mistake. And cars running purely on cameras are comparably to short sighted baby human drivers.
Tesla uses radar, and are working on improving their radar to return point clouds just like lidar does.
Even then, cameras are enough for accurately mapping the world around the car, it’s just that Tesla’s state of the art has not matched the academic proofs of concept that have been demonstrated over the last few years.
Cameras tend to rely on markers of some sort - and in cases like the markers on the road were very misleading. Even a short-sighted beginner human driver who was told to carefully follow the lanes would have made the same mistake. And cars running purely on cameras are comparably to short sighted baby human drivers.