I had to look this up, but you’re mostly right. They never really did use LiDAR. They did use other types of radar, which were removed or disabled. In any case, they (Elon) asserted that neither radar nor LiDAR was really necessary.

However, that was mostly a couple years ago. In the past month or two they actually have begun buying up tons of LiDAR.

Also, they were sued over FSD in court and their lawyers are now arguing that customers should’ve known that cars without LiDAR are not capable of reliable FSD.