As Elon Musk made clear Monday, the technology most of his competitors in the self-driving car space use to help vehicles detect what's around them is lame. 

And his option is way better. 

"LiDAR is a fool's errand," he quipped about the laser-emitting tool that, in the simplest terms, acts as eyes for autonomous cars. "Anyone who is relying on LiDAR is doomed."

That's pretty much most of the businesses testing self-driving cars, including Waymo and Uber who went to court over LiDAR technology last year.

Musk let his strong opinions about LiDAR fly at Tesla's Autonomy Day, an event that gave investors at the company's Palo Alto headquarters and 50,000-plus livestream viewers an inside look at self-driving tech.  Read more...