It's almost certainly because he dug the hole so deep in advertising. By saying "we need LIDAR", means that his promise "your car that you own right now will someday be self driving" was a lie. I can't imagine the lawsuits.
I cannot imagine how a musk-fan (at this point, I would classify anyone, who believes his claims as a fan) thinks, but it seems so weird to me to actually cling on that hope, that it should make the promise easy to break. It has been a while he made this promise, and it's nowhere near to be delivered. What does it even matter? How long are you comfortable owning the same car (the one that has more electronics in it than iPhone)? 10 years? 20 years? If he doesn't deliver FSD in that time, it doesn't really matter if it will be the same old cars that will achieve FSD. And if you can achieve FSD with better technology on a newer car, it's a win-win, it doesn't really break the promise that your 20 y.o. Tesla will achieve FSD. Maybe in 30 more years it will.
