Robocars - Autonomous Drive, Self-driving, Driver-less cars

Makes sense. It still seems very bad that they'd allow a blind spot that big though, no? In terms of lower speed incidents? Then admit that.

Cars don't need LIDAR. One can do SLAM without it-- see. for example, https://vision.in.tum.de/research/vslam/lsdslam.
You don't need LIDAR to "see". LIDAR is not magic. 850-950 nm is not really ideal-- except that one can get emitters out of silicon. Radar, ultrasonic, optical cameras and other sensors should-- and I think we'll increasingly see this-- be sufficient. Radar works better than 950nm LIDAR in snow, rain and fog. Optical cameras can "see" color and constrast. Ultrasonic has very short distances but works pretty well in all weather conditions.
Including a LIDAR on the roof is, I think, a good solution this week. Even if they get down to under $250 (and the Velodyne units start at around $4k and some are as much as $80k) and reduced in size there is still no need to have them by the 6 pack.. Don't underestimate the power and potential of optical image capture.
There are also a number of interesting optical camera capture techniques on the horizon. See: http://web.media.mit.edu/~guysatat/fog/