I understand not wanting to pay the cost of LiDAR like twelve years ago but the price has come down since then. At this point does it even make sense to stick to cameras? What possible reason is there other than an aging Elmo's ego?

Even if it prevents like ten deaths, the LiDAR will have paid for itself.

I take them regularly in SF, twice cheaper than lyft, 4x cheaper than waymo and works fine... it's literally the cheapest other than zoox (free if on tester list, which I am), but it's as fast as Lyft/Uber.