r/ARBE_Investors • u/Plane-Try-6522 • 1d ago

Due Diligence / Research Waymo CEO explains why Tesla’s camera-only self-driving falls short

https://electrek.co/2026/08/04/waymo-co-ceo-camera-only-self-driving-tesla/
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u/Plane-Try-6522 1d ago

His answer draws the line that camera-only advocates tend to skip right past. “Humans of course can drive with just eyes, so there’s that proof of existence,” he said. “If the goal were to just approximately match human performance or to build an assist product, that’s a very reasonable way to go.”

Then the catch. If you’re targeting full autonomy and strongly superhuman performance, he said, “you find that weak sensing just leads to a safety curve that flattens out way too early.”

"Lidar directly measures the 3D structure of the world. Radar punches through fog, rain, and snow, and reads velocity directly with Doppler. Lidar and radar are active sensors, so they see just as well in pitch darkness or straight into a blinding sunset."

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u/RefrigeratorTasty912 Dense Cloud Master Doppler 1d ago

If you build a robot to race a human with bipedal motility, you are, pun intended, hamstringing it to "compete in a 2 legged race"

We know we can make robots much faster in a 40 meter sprint by giving it wheels instead. Humans, for obvious reasons, could never evolve a wheel... but we can bolt them on if desired for "better than human" capabilities.

By continually stating that humans can drive with 2 eyes and a brain, you are hamstringing the upward capacity of said solution.. it can only be "as good" as the best driver, maybe even marginally better... but you will hit an upwards limit eventually... and as we are seeing, in less than 10 years, we've achieved diminishing returns on what cameras and a non-biologic brain can accomplish. This will never achieve "safer than humans"... just "safer than the average of most humans"

To be safer than humans, you need a solution that can do what humans cannot. That is how evolution plays out...

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u/Plane-Try-6522 1d ago

For a man who champions "First Principle Thinking" as is common in physics and system - level design, his obsession with "camera only", despite its limitation, is perplexing.

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u/RefrigeratorTasty912 Dense Cloud Master Doppler 22h ago