He's famously said that humans are good enough with just our two eyes. So he went the cheap route of not including lidar and relying on stereoscopic cameras.

He's an idiot. Because when I want stuff automated, I want it to be better than what a human can do.

Because he seems to base his ideas purely on how cool he thinks they are rather than practicality and efficiency (such as the hidden tesla door handles).

GPS is knowledge of the city. Most cities publish detailed street map data that is immediately imported into gps maps. The car relies on the gps not just for navigating, but even deciding things like what lane. And of course gps’s have much more complete traffic data than your human taxi driver ever did.

Does the taxi driver remember every sign in the city, every road and parking spot? No. They are humans - they remember the streets, some important spots that are confusing, maybe a couple of shortcuts. There is a huge difference between having a 3d map of everything in the city in the memory, and setting a GPS to an address, reading the signs as you go by and adhering to them. Also if self driving tech is to expand, you don't go putting the entire world into memory - that's not scaleable.