Isn't this the best part of capitalism? Someone makes a lightbulb that's super inefficient but gets everyone thinking about the brilliance of candleless light at night. We then spend generations evolving the concept hundreds of times, with a market that rewards these innovations through sales.
Is there a better way to build a better autonomous car? We're at the initial stage of exciting people with an implementation that kind of works. We will now spend generations selling better and better cars with different, fewer, better, cheaper sensors and other parts.
I'm not sure I agree with your analogy between current "autonomous" vehicles and an inefficient lightbulb. I'd say it's more like a lightbulb that flickers and burns out in 5 seconds. In which case it probably makes more sense to make the lightbulb not burn out first.
I don't think Edison (and his employees) got a momentary flash of light from a lightbulb and then said, "alright, it's almost working, now let's see if we can do it without the fragile glass bulb."
Your intuition is correct. Practical electric lights, in the form of arc lamps, existed before Edison was even born and were successfully commercialized many years before the incandescent light bulb.
Effective incandescent light bulbs were also around before Edison's. The main things Edison's team brought to the table were a better filament material, a better vacuum in the bulb, and supporting electrical infrastructure (generators, etc.)
It usually takes some time from the point "we have done all the basic research" to something that is successful in the market. Today, autonomous driving seems still to be in the basic research stage. If there was a research car, filled with ridiculously expensive hardware, able to perform at human level, I'd be more optimistic about the introduction of a marketable self driving car ten years from now. Take the mouse + graphical GUI example. It was demonstrated in the late 1960s but became only economically viable in the mid 1980s.
Is there a better way to build a better autonomous car? We're at the initial stage of exciting people with an implementation that kind of works. We will now spend generations selling better and better cars with different, fewer, better, cheaper sensors and other parts.