Well he said all sorts to try and justify it but really it was a cost-cutting exercise, of course it was a cost cutting exercise, why else would they do it?
Anyway that explanation doesn't make sense, if using lidar was a crutch then surely that's a good solution right. It's a bit like going, no you shouldn't use wings on your aircraft that's a crutch, you should be using the antigravity tech that we don't have yet.
In the long run there probably are going to be better solutions (that's how civilizations advance), but those better solutions don't exist yet, so... maybe we should use what we have.