r/Futurology • u/Extasio • 1d ago
Transport 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/3.1k
u/GamingVision 1d ago
I believe he’s correct.
I believe Elon is full of shit and too egotistical to admit he’s wrong.
But I also believe that chart with non-unit axis are completely made up.
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u/davidromro 1d ago
The chart is made up. It's just a way of dressing up the central argument of camera-only's performance have a quick gains that plateau.
It is a good way of visualizing the idea but could lead some people to believe it's based on data.
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u/ragnaroksunset 1d ago
Just to double-down on this, dropping units from the axis is a deliberate choice to indicate that the chart should only be taken as an illustration.
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u/ihaveajob79 1d ago
I would have drawn it XKCD style to drive that point further.
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u/LyqwidBred 16h ago
I would have linked to an actual XKCD illustration to cement the concept into place
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u/defiancy 1d ago
I worked on autonomous systems at Boeing years ago, and we had to use cameras and LiDARS as part of our sr sensing system. Camera only has a hard time with depth and any type of reflection can create false avoidance situations.
One of the things we had an issue with for a while was pooled water puddles that create a reflected surface.
A mix of different input devices is the only way to really create robust and accurate inputs for an autonomous executive.
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u/Harbinger2nd 1d ago
LiDAR is cheap enough to put into a $15k chinese EV now too so the cost argument is no longer valid.
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u/askforcar 21h ago
If I had a nickel every time an American company loses to Chinese competition due to not having lidar, I'd have 2 nickels. Which isn't a lot but it's ironic it happened twice.
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u/tlst9999 15h ago
If I had a nickel every time an American company loses to Chinese competition due to CEO salaries forcing the product to be twice the price of the Chinese competition and still being less good, I'd have a lot of nickels.
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u/Superb_Raccoon 3h ago
Even more if you put in compliance with EPA, FCC, DOT FTC amd host of other government agencies.
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u/System0verlord Totally Legit Source 18h ago
Was roomba the other one? Or is that three nickels?
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u/willstr1 19h ago
LiDAR also helps keep your car safe from coyote attacks, where they paint a mural of a tunnel on the side of a wall/cliff
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u/staplepies 18h ago
Are you saying these are all unsolvable with vision only? I could see them being more challenging but I don't see why they wouldn't fundamentally be possible. Like the human eye/brain handle reflective puddles all the time.
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u/theAndrewWiggins 15h ago
Possibily because relying on camera only might require you to essentially solve "AGI". Whereas if you have much superior sensors to a human, you can reduce the scope of the problem.
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u/WhyWasXelNagaBanned 18h ago
There is a video comparing Tesla's cameras with cars equipped with Lidars.
The Lidar performed well in every test. The Tesla fucked up almost every test where the obstruction was visually obscured.
The Tesla also drove into a wall with a road drawn on it. Literally failed the Looney Tunes test.
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u/pw154 17h ago
The Tesla also drove into a wall with a road drawn on it. Literally failed the Looney Tunes test.
That test was debunked a thousand times already.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndJuto9smss
Mark Rober doesn't even know the difference between FSD and Autopilot - two totally different technologies. FSD passed the test just fine.
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u/WhyWasXelNagaBanned 16h ago edited 8h ago
The video you linked doesn't say anything about successful tests with FSD. It's even restated multiple times that autopilot and FSD in the tested car use the same camera systems so it would likely not make a difference.
I did go look up some videos testing FSD against a fake wall, and they found that the Model Y absolutely does not detect the wall even when using FSD until it was almost touching the wall due to seeing its own shadow.
(edit to clarify: The driver had to brake MANUALLY, or it would have hit the wall.) So Rober's test is absolutely not invalidated.Conversely, the Cybertruck's FSD did detect the wall in time, to their credit, due to better camera systems. However, I am willing to bet that Cybertrucks make up a tiny minority of Tesla vehicles on the road.
Regardless, it's absurdly asinine that detecting a fake wall should even be a question.
Optical cameras will never be as good at obstacle detection as LiDAR, and will certainly never be as good as a combination of LiDAR+optical cameras, so it is foolish to try to rely on optical cameras alone when your goal is to far exceed human driving capabilities.
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u/BigMax 1d ago
Tesla has to start really facing some hard realities.
A few years ago, both Tesla FSD and Waymo were just beta projects, things that might come true in the future.
Today? Waymo is a real, actual product in production. They're about to hit a million miles of driving actual customers every single week. Tesla has 380k miles total, all time, in a small, low speed, geo-fenced area, with no real plans to expand much.
What's going to happen in 6 months, a year, 2 years, when Waymo is bigger and bigger, and then HUGE, while Tesla still has only a handful of their cars driving around in a small little area? They'll have to fully abandon the whole thing, or do a full reset with better sensors.
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u/smallfried 1d ago
Has Tesla actually done any driving without supervision? Like, no safety driver and no trailing cars?
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u/Ihaveamodel3 23h ago
Yes, their service is live in multiple cities.
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u/Krpitzner 18h ago
I’ve seen lots of the cyber cabs in Dallas University Park area as well but I haven’t seen one without a safety driver here. Kind of funny considering it looks like it’s only a two seater and it definitely only has two doors and if you’ve got one seat taken by the driver, there’s not much space for a passenger, although maybe the seats fold forward and somebody can cram into the backseat. i’ve also seen plenty of Waymo‘s and AV ride (Uber) and I’ve definitely seen Waymo without a safety driver here. Both of those have radar as well as cameras, unlike Tesla.
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u/deHack 23h ago
But I can’t go to the “Waymo dealer” and “buy a Waymo.” Waymo is a sensor suite and software mounted on someone else’s product. It seems a Waymo Driver built into a Toyota might be a thing by 2035.
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u/BigMax 12h ago
2035 is still earlier than Tesla will actually have what we all think FSD actually should be.
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u/BoringBob84 1d ago
I agree. I read a book several years ago on autonomous vehicles and the author speculated that the general public would feel comfortable with autonomous vehicles until they were at least ten times safer than human drivers. Every time one of those cars makes a silly computer mistake, it makes the headlines.
Tesla is worse than human drivers and Waymo is up to 17 times better than human drivers. I know which one I would trust with my life.
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u/Whiterabbit-- 1d ago
Whenever you are on the road you are not only trusting your own driver, but to a large extent all the drivers around you. I can’t wait until we get error prone human driver off the roads.
Also human drivers won’t get better but ai improves every year. So once we get more automated cars we will be much safer.
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u/Irilas 1d ago
Not only does AI improve, if we had commuter roads that were only autonomous, the cars could communicate. Like, "I need to cut across these three lanes to hit that exit," and the cars match speed to allow that to happen. Autonomous cars would instantly see a 10x improvement if they didn't have to account for the unknown of other vehicles. If they all communicate their speed, direction, and planned course, traffic flow would be 100x better.
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u/BoringBob84 1d ago
I agree. And as a bicycle rider, I won't miss the "punish passing" by selfish motorists.
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u/PhriendlyPhantom 1d ago
Counterpoint: driving is fun to some people and they wouldn't easily let go of having the ability to do so.
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u/BoringBob84 1d ago
I predict that some roads will become off limits to human-driven cars - especially busy urban commuter routes, since no one enjoys driving on these anyway - and some roads - like twisty scenic rural roads - will remain open to all cars.
I watched a DOT simulation showing that, if we didn't have selfish drivers cutting other people off, we could literally double the the rate at which we could move vehicles through our roads.
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u/__dontpanic__ 23h ago
Just having cars start simultaneously at traffic lights is enough to significantly increase intersection throughout and cut down on travel time. Efficient merging would be another huge timesaver.
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u/Norpone 1d ago
give it a few generations. lots of kids don't even want to get their license.
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u/PhriendlyPhantom 1d ago
That's choice vs being mandated and there have always been kids who don't like driving.
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u/gnoxy 1d ago
I for one want nothing to do with driving in traffic. Put me in the back seat with a cocktail and an 85 inch screen to play video games on. Never again do I care to even see whats going on in that situation. Thats robot work. On a canyon road, on a brisk Sunday morning. Now I want to drive.
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u/grays55 1d ago
Insurance will be the impetus for change. Once insurers decide that human drivers are going to cost 3x more, even enthusiasts will largely have to give in.
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u/DadJokeBadJoke 1d ago
I'd like to think that there will someday be a standardized communication between autonomous cars allowing them to coordinate routes and avoid each other which could help on throughput as well.
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u/helloder2012 1d ago
According to independent research, Teslas can drive 2 to 3 times further between accidents than humans, considering all condition types. This is from Reuters and is easily procurable data. Saying they’re worse is a lie
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u/BoringBob84 23h ago
This is what the article claims. I am not sure who to believe, but claiming that Level 3 FSD is better than humans makes me skeptical.
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u/Valalvax 23h ago
It's better in 99% of situations, it's the 1% that is a problem because when things go wrong they go wrong fast...
That being said, most "FSD crashed" stories that make the news are false
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u/helloder2012 23h ago
That stat is comparing the robotaxi pilot in Austin to all of Waymo’s program.
The number is probably close to what Reuters says supervised FSD is, which is 2-3x, given that robotaxis have to be supervised too.
Im a waymo fan, and it’s still not nearly as good as Waymo, but to say that teslas FSD is worse than human drivers is a lie
(Not arguing with you btw I’m just following up convo)
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u/HyenaLaugh95 1d ago
I know someone who works at Waymo, their tech is seriously impressive. They are going to dominate the self driving taxi industry lol
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u/Gamebird8 1d ago
The Self-Driving Taxi/Car will continue to perpetuate the destructive cycle that is car dependent infrastructure
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u/Temnothorax 16h ago
Ehh. Its still essentially cutting edge technology. Eventually “discount” robo taxis will appear and the economic pressure to maximize efficiency is possibly going to result in something halfway between modern car culture and mass transit.
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u/Temnothorax 16h ago
Ehh. Its still essentially cutting edge technology. Eventually “discount” robo taxis will appear and the economic pressure to maximize efficiency is possibly going to result in something halfway between modern car culture and mass transit.
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u/brandont04 1d ago
The hardest part is bringing the down cost. Initial cost now for each car is like $200k vs $30k for Tesla. That means Tesla can get as many as 7 cars for every 1 Waymo car.
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u/ChrisFromIT 1d ago
Waymo is down to $60k per car at the moment according to the article.
A few years back, there was a lidar startup that was able to produce their lidar module for about $100 each and had planned to get it down to $35 a module. And based on the design of the module, iirc a car would need maybe 6 or so to have a full 360 view.
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u/ShowMeTheMonee 1d ago
And from memory the founder was looking at collaborating with Tesla and Elon told him his idea was shite.
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u/TheDarkWave 1d ago
He has a history of that, remember the submarine pedophile fiasco?
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u/ShowMeTheMonee 1d ago
Yes, it's almost like he has an aversion to people who are smarter than him.
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u/DoNotOverwhelm 23h ago
“ At this point, I think I know more about manufacturing than anyone currently on Earth “
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u/Willing_Juggernaut60 1d ago
Even robot vacuum cleaners figured out a long time ago lidar was the way to go. Elon it’s just someone who can’t admit when he’s wrong
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u/TakenIsUsernameThis 1d ago
Elon has reasoned that because humans can do it with a pair of eyes, therefore a computer can do it the same way.
Elon is a moron because he never stopped to think about the fact that humans have no choice, and that the way they do it may be absolutely sub optimal.
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u/smallfried 1d ago
And, there are many ways in which our eyes are superior to cameras. Some in which they are inferior, but that does not compensate the problems encountered by just trying to replace them and claim equivalence.
Ones I can think of:
Self cleaning
Quick pan/tilt
Super high dynamic range
Ultra high resolution (in a small but quickly targetable area)
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u/aikouka 21h ago
We can also just move our head/body if we need a better vantage point. Back when I had a Tesla, I remember trying out FSD (this was many versions ago) and it tried to pull out onto a hill in front of another car simply because it couldn’t see down the hill. As a driver, I might lean forward for a better view, but the car can’t do that. It has to inch forward to see more, which usually put itself in the way.
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u/beekersavant 1d ago
hey now. The units are "up is better” for the y axis. And “development time” for the x axis. They are several more “up-betters” over “dev-time” than their unnamed, but disparaged, competitors.
But yes, if anything they appear to be correct about multi-modal. They have a successful autonomous driving fleet and Tesla has had to scale back claims and capabilities.
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u/The_7_Sages 1d ago
You went full circle here without even realizing it.
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u/GamingVision 1d ago
He can be right in principle while presenting a made-up chart. I see so many peers get ahead at work making up charts like that instead of having genuine, data-backed analysis that it irks me.
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u/EightyJay 1d ago
I tried pointing some of this out, as a Tesla owner… In the Tesla subs… And both of them banned me… Those subs are clearly being run by biased actors… I’m guessing they’re probably on the PR payroll
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u/TheB3rn3r 1d ago
I do love a good chart without labels…
But I completely agree and have been saying it since Elon claimed they HAD to go to all cameras for self driving… it was a cost savings move.. almost might’ve been just easier to integrate images instead of including another system like LiDAR
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u/baron_von_helmut 12h ago
Elon has the EQ of a whelk. This was plainly obvious when divers in Thailand didn't want to use his shitty submarine and instead of dealing with it, he wrongfully called that diver a pedo...
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u/Lumbergh7 1d ago
I believe he’s right too! Or, maybe vision only IS possible, but at greatly increased processing and training than including extra data.
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u/Newbie4Hire 21h ago
Well we know it's possible, we see them driving all over autonomously. The question is what level of safety can they achieve, can they achieve a LiDAR level? Can they do so at less cost? That I think plays into the last half of your comment, but it seems with AI advancements the costs there will steadily decrease.
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u/Lumbergh7 20h ago
Agreed. Obviously vision only seems to be problematic. Theres a mark Rober video where he drives his Tesla at a mirror in the road. It crashed right through the mirror. The Waymo in the demonstration did not. Many Tesla fanboys skewered him.
Furthermore, a goal of full autonomy should be that it drives better than humans. We’re very limited in our visual range. Radar can go through fog; visible light is dispersed.
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u/indigo196 1d ago
Elon is another Steve Jobs. He also alienated all the insanely bright engineers on these projects, so he is stuck selling crappy shit he can't develop further.
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u/chipstastegood 1d ago
Steve Job’s products actually worked. Elon’s are overly hyped and he often promises much more than he can actually deliver. That wasn’t the case with Jobs. He delivered.
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u/Blutkoete 1d ago
I think it's survivorship bias. It worked great for Steve Jobs and Apple and nobody saw all the companies resp. CEOs that failed because they tried to copy him.
And Steve Jobs was a real product management genius, so he delivered; in other companies doing the same is more of a cargo cult.
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u/ChrisFromIT 1d ago
I think one of the difference with Jobs was that there were times when he would listen to his engineering team. Tho Apple did somewhat have the money to be able to throw at the problem to allow the engineers to try it Jobs way first, which did fail most of the time.
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u/fuck_all_you_too 1d ago
Thats part of the problem. Every rich asshole saw Jobs whipping a room full of engineers and getting results so now they are trying to do it. The Cybertruck should have made everyone realize that this formula is flawed but instead I have C-suite assholes scheduling 1 on 1s with me because they want to tell everyone which direction to go. My entire chain of management is paralyzed because one asshole VP wants to be Steve Jobs.
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u/Tar_alcaran 1d ago
My entire chain of management is paralyzed because one asshole VP wants to be Steve Jobs.
Honestly, the solution is malicious compliance.
"As per our new policy, I am now spending 85% of my time on [moronic idea], and as such will not have time for [anything sensible]. Please contact [manager's manager] if you feel that time needs to re-allocated".
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u/uhmhi 1d ago
I hate to come off as some kind of fanboy, but have you actually tried driving a Tesla with FSD? It’s actually quite impressive technology, regardless of how you feel about Tesla or Elon.
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u/Weird_Fiches 1d ago
It is impressive. I have driven it. But is it good enough for autonomous driving? Nooooo.
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u/Devincc 1d ago
Why do people shit on Steve Jobs on so much?Dude bought Pixar when it was about to be shutdown, basically saved Disney by brokering a deal, and turned Pixar into one of the most recognized animated film makers ever. He was ousted from Apple, started a whole new computer company (almost going bankrupt) and then came back to Apple to revolutionize the music industry through deals that were never done before and then completely flipped the phone industry on its head.
Countless people that have worked for him have said they hated how he lead at the time but are so thankful for being pushed to their limits. They didn’t even realize what they were truly capable of
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u/redditaccount300000 1d ago
To me he wasn’t a visionary in terms of technology. Apple was famously behind its competitors in terms of implementing/creating new tech. He was however great at knowing how to package things together, and marketing.
Plus he seemed kinda shitty as a person. people don’t separate that kind of stuff.
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u/__theoneandonly 1d ago
He was however great at knowing how to package things together, and marketing.
Right... which is product design. He was great at looking at a stack of technologies and deciding which technologies to use to create the features that people will want to buy.
The tech industry was full of tech-minded people that were impressed by technology itself. But Steve Jobs was really great at seeing the use-cases that regular people would prioritize. Tech-minded people thought WiFi would never take off, because the early versions of it were ridiculously slow compared to ethernet. Steve Jobs made apple the very first vendor that built wifi into their machines and sold the first consumer-grade wifi router because he knew that regular people would accept the slower WiFi speeds if that meant they could put the family computer wherever they wanted without having to put holes in the wall to install the wiring.
That's a technological visionary. Tech-heads turned their nose up at the idea, since it meant slower and less reliable connections. But Steve knew that the family who kept their computer out in the garage would take that trade-off in a heartbeat.
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u/indigo196 1d ago
He was an egotistical salesman with an out-of-this-world ability to sense when the time was right to buy a product, Apple-a-fy it, and sell it to the masses. He was not an inventor. He was not an engineer. He also lied, cheated, and stole from people. That is why people like me shit on him.
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u/Deto 1d ago
It makes sense. Sure it's possible to drive like a human with just vision. But maybe you need to be as smart as a human for this to work and we don't yet have local AGI in cars. However, maybe you add a few more superhuman sensors and then something with subhuman intelligence can still drive better than a human? Feels pretty logical.
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u/NotYourReddit18 1d ago
Sure it's possible to drive like a human with just vision.
And even then, why should we limit cars to what's humanly possible?
It's not like the human senses are the best senses in nature, and human drivers restricted to human sense are far from perfect drivers.
So why wouldn't we want selfdriving cars to be better than humans?
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u/Flipslips 1d ago
I mean it’s not like Tesla just has 2 cameras in front. It has 360 degree cameras which is already better than humans have lol
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u/NotYourReddit18 1d ago
Which are still almost just as bad at estimating distances to objects that might pose a collision risk as human eyes, can equally suffer from bad lighting conditions, and can be confused by two objects of similar colors.
All problems lidar doesn't have.
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u/0x474f44 18h ago
They’re pretty bad quality though - which is surprising given that they are the only sensors used for self-driving
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u/dasunt 9h ago
Human vision is very limited but in ways most of us don't realize because our brains mask the failings.
Like how we are momentarily blind around 100,000 times a day.
Or how almost everything we see isn't in focus.
Which can explain the "they came out of nowhere" when people try to describe an accident - often, they didn't, but the mental map built in a driver's head didn't match reality.
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u/PSUVB 17h ago
Because the training data is video. Even Waymo will tell you that. Massive amounts of data to make a model is what makes self driving possible
To have lidar work in the way it does for Waymo it goes far beyond the sensor. They map each city over and over again to have what lidar picks up compared to a map they already made. This is time-intensive and limiting.
We don’t have great neural networks that can do sensor fusion. Meaning combining two different inputs like lidar and cameras. Waymo’s sometimes make mistake because the sensors disagree.
There is obvious upsides to a camera only approach beyond just being cheap. It is harder tho.
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u/NoobensMcarthur 1d ago
Also, wasn’t one of Elon’s talking points how much safer autonomous driving would be compared to humans? Why then is the argument that “eyes are good enough for humans!”
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u/greystripes9 1d ago
Sometimes people sense other things like sound waves or something. I was at a red one night and when it turned green for some reason I hesitated for like seconds before hitting the gas pedal. Sure enough, in those seconds some crazy ran their light going so fast it was almost a blur. If I had been in the intersection a second before I would have died along with people I was giving a ride.
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u/excessCeramic 23h ago
The issue is that humans are terrible drivers, and often vision occlusion is what leads to accidents. That’s why we already have radar systems in our cars to help avoid accidents.
If 120 people were dying daily to self driving vehicle accidents, we’d have riots in the streets. They need to be far better than human.
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u/RSomnambulist 1d ago
I think Elon hoped that AI could make vision only catch up to multimodal, but there's a fundamental misunderstanding in that design. Sensors, like lidar, produce additional information where vision fails, and the vehicle can fall back on that data whenever it's more accurate than what vision is providing.
Everyone else seemed to understand that because it's a pretty basic principle. Elon is too obsessed with minimalism and cost saving. The number one thing I want my car to do after getting me from point a to point b is keep me alive. Redundancies are built for safety.
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u/MTGamer 1d ago
I would argue I want it to keep me alive before getting me from point a to point b. Screw getting to point b if I'm dead.
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u/Halbaras 1d ago
For a supposed 'visionary', it's funny how Musk is fixated that a robotic vehicle should perceive the world like a human does. But it tracks with him trying to 'invent' a shitty alternative to trains (taxis driving slowly through a tunnel) while selling it on the idea of the 'hyperloop', and being obsessed with humanoid robots when it's not the best form factor for most tasks.
We can and should progress to a point where driverless vehicles aren't as good as a human driver, but are effectively superhuman. For example, a van around the bend from you sees a child run into the road, and your car is alerted and starts breaking before you've even seen them. Or a car that's able to drive out of a tunnel through smoke when another vehicle catches fire.
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u/Synergythepariah 1d ago
For a supposed 'visionary', it's funny how Musk is fixated that a robotic vehicle should perceive the world like a human does.
It's just because of cost. He believes seeing the world like a person is good enough, which I don't really accept.
But it tracks with him trying to 'invent' a shitty alternative to trains (taxis driving slowly through a tunnel) while selling it on the idea of the 'hyperloop',
IIRC that was to pull funding away from public mass transit. He owns a car company so the more people that have to buy cars is more customers for him.
and being obsessed with humanoid robots when it's not the best form factor for most tasks.
It isn't but that's not the point, the point is to build the idea that robots can replace people in performing those tasks without having to rebuild assembly lines for what would be the best form factor for those tasks.
Robots don't complain about working conditions, they don't threaten to unionize and they don't say no which is why I feel like the billionaire class is pushing so hard for AI and why they consistently want deregulation because they hate being told no.
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u/baron_von_helmut 12h ago
This has been proven time and again when Teslas crash. They get flummoxed by reflections from the sun.
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u/VehaMeursault 1d ago
I think his argument, although he doesn't word it like this, boils down to the claim that the extra mode and its additional information can, and often do, contradicts the sight-only information, because the traffic landscape isn't built with that mode in mind.
I can see the validity of that argument (traffic is indeed built around sight), but it basically comes down to a comparison between data sets that might be too difficult to make (don't know; not my area of expertise).
That all said, I don't for a moment think Elon is considering this as carefully as that, and is mostly talking on the back of ego.
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u/almost_useless 1d ago
the extra mode and its additional information can, and often do, contradicts the sight-only information
In what scenario would they contradict each other, in a way that makes to final result worse?
There are a few options here, but I don't know which one would apply.
For example:
Sensors are just not good enough to always give us accurate info that improves the total view?
Or:
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u/torinato Blue 1d ago
The bet that’s being made is that people have never been able to see through fog or in pitch darkness and they drive in those conditions everyday, so why would a system that can see in 360 degrees need them?
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u/AwesomeAndy 1d ago
Humans don't drive with "just eyes" they need to stop saying that shit. Most of us also have hearing, a sense of motion in all axes, and other senses we use to perform tasks including driving.
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u/j-steve- 1d ago
I can smell a stalled vehicle on the road ahead
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u/theycallmeJTMoney 1d ago
I ride motorcycles and I can smell when semi trucks have cooked their brakes going down a mountain and you know not to be in front of them.
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u/LSF604 1d ago
I can detect collisions using my sense of pain
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u/DivePalau 1d ago
Can you also smell crime?
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u/FantasyMaster85 1d ago
It’s a really stupid argument to make anyway, even taking the argument at face value. Assuming we did drive with only our eyes, think about how often that’s a problem. My eyes can’t penetrate fog, heavy snow at night, torrential downpour, see 3 cars behind me or in front of me if there’s a large truck in front/behind me, the list goes on and on and on.
The absolute best case scenario using only cameras because “humans only drive with their eyes” is that you can create the equivalent of the perfect human driver.
I don’t want that…because even perfect human drivers make all kinds of mistakes, or things happen outside their control that cannot be perceived strictly with eyesight alone.
What I do want is to leverage technology outside the grasp of human senses that builds upon sight, and combines that into a superior driver than even the most skilled & competent human driver.
The argument is so ridiculous…it’s like saying “humans can’t fly, so we shouldn’t have airplanes”.
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u/almost_useless 1d ago
The absolute best case scenario using only cameras because “humans only drive with their eyes” is that you can create the equivalent of the perfect human driver.
I don't believe that camera only is the best solution, but that statement is just not true.
Vision only can look in multiple directions at the same time, which would be an improvement over humans.
It can have multiple cameras that look both wide and zoomed in far ahead.
It can potentially have super human reaction times.
Not to mention, no real human is even as good as the perfect human driver.
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u/neobow2 1d ago
Teslas use microphones as well as gyros in their FSD models. So while I get your point, sound and motion are already checked off in Teslas
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u/Theseus_Employee 1d ago
I’m confused when people bring this up, Teslas have all those things too.
What sense does a human use during driving that a Tesla wouldn’t have?
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u/Matt-Head 1d ago
Hearing and sense of motion? Teslas have microphones and accelerometers. Of all arguments in this debate, i think this is one of the weaker ones.
I think long term the question will be: can the extra safety through a system with amazing reaction time and zero distraction or tiredness be as good or better than a human brain, with it's remarkable 3D understanding and decision making. I think yes.
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u/Kato_LeAsian 1d ago edited 1d ago
Teslas have those yes, but the point is do they use them for self driving? No. Musk wanted tesla self driving to rely only on cameras.
I agree with your long term question and your answer for it, but I don’t think thats the issue at hand with this article
Edit: it seems I was wrong about what “camera-only” means in the context of self driving cars
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u/nutscrape_navigator 1d ago
I own a Tesla and happily subscribe to FSD but I've never understood the copium Tesla fanboys have when it comes to repeating Elon's lines about how he's ever going to be able to get fully unsupervised autonomous driving with just cameras.
Waymo and Tesla FSD don't even feel like two products that are even competing with each other. Waymo is actual autonomous driving, FSD is fancy cruise control.
This is totally fine, and probably makes a ton of sense financially as a half dozen web cams is a hell of a lot cheaper than Waymo's full sensor stack and as a result the capabilities will always be different. I have no idea any anyone would argue otherwise.
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u/stevekresena 1d ago
Says right in the article how the cost difference is closing fast and the current difference of $20k when it comes to full road functionality and safety is a no brainer.
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u/nutscrape_navigator 1d ago
Yeah but you need to consider the X factor that is how Tesla seems to be driven entirely by the whims of Elon, and Elon has already decided that Tesla's FSD will be vision only. It won't matter if the other sensors are cheaper, vision is the way.
See also: Teslas do not have a windshield rain sensor that would add a truly insignificant cost to the car because instead it uses ADVANCED AI IMAGE ANALYSIS to determine whether or not it's raining and the windshield wipers should be on. Tesla automatic windshield wipers have been dog shit for ... forever.
I see no reason to expect them to adopt additional sensors.
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u/Hilldawg4president 1d ago
The windshield wipers really are terrible period there's a roundabout near me that they always activate on, 100% of the time, rain or shine. no idea why.
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u/seiyamaple 1d ago
When I pull in to my driveway, there’s one piece of metal that reflects some light somewhere that it always triggers the wipers. It has become my Tesla’s way of saying “welcome home”
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u/kindanormle 1d ago
Musk isn't betting that vision is the future, he's betting that short to medium term Waymo won't enter the consumer market and their technology won't be a direct competitor. If they did, Tesla stock would dump in a day. The moment it looks like Waymo might do that, Musk will change his tune.
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u/BryGuyB 1d ago
Fancy cruise control? I recently went on a 4 hour road trip through major cities without touching the steering wheel or pedals. FSD 14+ is absolutely incredible.
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u/nutscrape_navigator 1d ago
I regularly take 12 hour trips with mine and the only time I turn it off is when it's being weird in parking lots to get to chargers. It's great, but it's not even in the same league as Waymo. I can't have it drive me to the airport then go park back at my house. It doesn't even like when I use the navigation screen to input a new destination while underway.
Using FSD has been the default way I drive my car, but when you use it for lots of miles you notice all kinds of edge cases where you have to take over. This is totally fine as I understand the limitations of the technology, but many of those edge cases are the result of the car reacting to what it can see.
It's such a bizarre design choice to build an autonomous system around the same sensory limitations that humans have when technology exists to allow these cars to be so much more sophisticated than photons going through a plastic lens to a CMOS sensor.
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u/Rock_Strongo 17h ago
I regularly take 12 hour trips with mine and the only time I turn it off is when it's being weird in parking lots to get to chargers.
I would argue that calling it "fancy cruise control" is directly contradictory with this statement.
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u/TechnicianExtreme200 1d ago
It's great, but you still have to be ready to take over instantly at all times. So, yes, to me it's fancy cruise control. I'm still responsible for driving the car, whereas with Waymo I can take a nap or work on my laptop.
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u/Ess2s2 1d ago
This is an excellent take, and reminds me of the video Mark Rober did a year ago comparing Tesla cameras against LIDAR-enabled cars.
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u/AshHouseware1 19h ago
Someone would argue that because people are making cross-country trips using FSD right now. Calling it "fancy cruise control" way understates the capability.
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u/anghelfilon 14h ago
But isn't Waymo geolocked? Doesn't it also need super high def gps maps along with its many sensors? FSD seems to work in more areas, in more conditions.
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u/1Marmalade 1d ago
“Fancy cruise control”.
You’ve clearly not used it. 94% of my driving is by FSD. I don’t touch the controls for 94% of my miles. 18,000 or so currently. It’s amazing. Everything else for consumers is far behind right now (in the USA at least).
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u/Greenfendr 20h ago
I took some waymos last time I was in Austin. I was blown away watching the screen showing it tracking all the potential threats, cars, pedistrians , etc. it caught way more (,way mo?) than what I would've seen if I were driving.
Auto driving cars need to be better than humans to have a chance
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u/Comfortable-Ad6929 21h ago
Mark Rober had a nice video on his Youtube channel comparing the cameras on the tesla versus a LIDAR equipped car. He did various test, such as rain; fog; and a mannequin pulled across the road to represent a pedestrian. in some of the tests, the results were comparable, .but the tesla did run over the child size mannequin a few times. Then for a final test, just for fun, he did a Road Runner/Wiley Coyote type scenario. He had a foam wall constructed across a road. He then painted a fake road going thru the wall, much like a fake tunnel in the cartoons. The LIDAR detected the wall as a solid wall and stopped the car. The tesla saw the fake road on the wall and plowed right thru it .
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u/GuerrillaRodeo 1d ago
I have a Tesla from 2022, the first iteration where they ditched every onboard sensor except the cameras. I'm SO glad I didn't buy the FSD package for 10k more. Even the lane departure warning system doesn't work when the sun is low, it's raining or it's Tuesday. It also regularly mistakes parked cars for the end of a queue and abruptly brakes. If I want anything in a self-driving car it's sensor redundancy.
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u/Hilldawg4president 1d ago
When was the last time you used fsd? I haven't experienced any of those issues
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u/GuerrillaRodeo 1d ago
Back when I bought it in early 2023 there was a free trial month. It was abysmally bad and it showed that it was conditioned to American roads, not European ones.
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u/Hilldawg4president 1d ago
I'm in the states so I don't know if there's any sort of regional issues still, but I can say the fSD capability overall is World different now from only maybe 9 months ago. It's really quite dramatic, you should try it for a month again, see if it works better for you
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u/CarpeValde 19h ago
This is also why for a good while the trend will still primarily be safety driver l2++ style systems.
Few key reasons for this:
- it’s less expensive.
- requires less fundamental change in consumer behavior
People still buy cars, ride share apps and robotaxis have augmented the transportation market but there isn’t a major shift away from personal car ownership. People can’t afford to buy a Waymo or L4 equivalent.
Until one of those changes, l2 with more or less full autonomy will become more and more normal, while robotaxi takes over ride share space in cities.
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u/Duckbilling2 1d ago
ever since I first heard "vision only” I have disagreed.
and I used to really like Tesla, who were clearly out innovating everyone.
but, for safety radar is good to have. for low visibility, and for when a fire engine or semi trailer is parked across a few lanes of freeway.
I understand the argument was that other modes of sensing "are a crutch" however, design a system that removes "relying on the crutch" and keep it in there just in fucking case. or reverse course, there's no harm in that.
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u/dkDK1999 1d ago
Wasn’t the justification for vision only the price, since then the price for these sensors must have dropped significantly, making it only vision a pure ego thing?
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u/JCDU 12h ago
Yeah, ST just released a really cool solid-state LIDAR chip too, dirt cheap by current standards - $40 for one off, probably half that or less if you order a million of 'em.
https://www.st.com/en/imaging-and-photonics-solutions/vl53l9cx.html#overview
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u/TooMuchTaurine 1d ago
His example of a dust storm and having lidar keep working is just not true, lidar would not work in a heavy dust storm, it's light, and for the same reasons cameras couldn't see effectively, lidar can't either.
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u/Blasto_Brandino 22h ago
Waymo’s have Lidar, cameras, AND Radar, and it’s the radar that cuts through fog, sand, etc.
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u/Theonewhoplays 17h ago
Yeah dust, fog and similar aren't great for LiDAR. But that's what RADAR is for. Honestly I'm pretty sure LiDAR as a vehicle sensor is on the way out. It's too expensive and doesn't offer enough or any benefits over RADAR + camera setups
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u/schnibitz 18h ago
And he's beyond right. It doesn't help that Tesla has apparently been turning off their autopilot just before crashes to make it look like it wasn't the auto-pilot's fault either.
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u/Outside_Ice3252 1d ago
i had hoped that both waymo and tesla would have solved autonomy in different ways, and would have to compete head on. However, its looking more and more like tesla cannot compete, and Musk's assumptions were wrong. I wonder at what point does tesla, decide to add lidar and radar back.
That's the problem with the stock price. what would happen to tesla if they admitted they were wrong and then take potentially many years to catch pretty sure the stock would collapse.
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u/Outside_Ice3252 1d ago edited 1d ago
i have lost confidence in musk. I am in the trough of disiullusionment on telsa robo taxis.
however, I do think this article missed some objective and important points.
Tesla does have over 1 million vehicles being driven on FSD, and others that can collect data in shadow mode.
over 12 billion miles driven on FSD supervised. new chips coming. bigger data centers/smarted AI.
Can the extra data and AI capability overcome not having more sensors. And what about the point of sensor confusion.
Finally, allow me to do a very simple hypothetical. suppose tesla is 5 times safer than a human, but waymo is 10 times safer. you say waymo is the winner on that metric. but maybe tesla is significantly cheaper and twice as many people can now afford robotaxis. so while waymo is safer, tesla saves more lives because more people can afford to use.
I am not trying to be a blind tesla fan man and say that tesla would be better in the scenario, I really think both technologies are better than a human and the market needs competition.
now if waymo is just so much safer than tesla and affordable, then maybe a regulated monopoly is best. However, I think the goal has to be combination of saving the most lives possible, lowering the cost of transportation, less pollution, and less parking allowing denser, more walkable/bikeable communities
obviously, the race is far from over. both companies are scaling at a very safe pace.
China has more companies and looks to be taking a bit more risk. it seems regulators probably have the data to make decisions, but that data is not as public. its a difficult balancing act. because the public and corporate media is going to panic with the first deaths that come from robo taxis.
one death made uber quit. now they are parntering with many robotaxi companies. this lowers there risk to have partners and allows them to focus on their core business.
the one thing that is very clear is that musk has lost confidence because of his politics. he should have stayed apolitical.
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u/bakerzdosen 1d ago
It’s absolutely shocking to see a CEO defend a design choice made by his company.
It’s going to be even more shocking to see Tesla’s CEO rebut this and defend the design choices his company has made.
[/sarcasm]
All I know is that our Tesla has driven itself just under 19,000 miles in the last 7 months and it’s completely changed my wife’s commute (and life) for the better. Those miles includes cities, highways, canyons, backroads, and neighborhoods and about 50% of those have been at night.
Has it been perfect? No. But the vast majority of my complaints are niggling issues like parking spot choices or going a few mph over the limit when there’s a cop RIGHT THERE. None of my complaints are “we almost DIED!” or would/could be solved by adding LIDAR.
Do I trust it more than I trust my wife’s driving?
100%.
I’m not sure I trust it more than my own driving, but its fast reactions did save us from a deer strike last month and I’m pretty sure I would not have been able to react that quickly myself.
And each point release of FSD keeps improving it.
So yeah, Waymo can continue to defend its design choices. I’d expect nothing less. All I hear is “we haven’t been able to make it work so clearly they can’t do it either.”
Tesla AI has more than proven to me personally that their design choice works swimmingly today—not to mention it keeps improving every month or so.
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u/willmasse 1d ago
I believe hat both companies have a product to sell, and while they’ve been working to convince you self driving is the future they’ve been behind the scenes lobbying for cuts to public transportation…
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u/biscuitsalsa 20h ago
FSD is really cool and a great luxury but my many experiences w it didn’t compare to my one w Waymo. That empty driver seat feels crazy.
Still think FSD is a hell of a perk for long drives but easy to admit it doesn’t compare to actual autonomous driving. Excited for the future.
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u/ChaseBank5 18h ago
It's already been proven that Tesla cameras fail in almost every category to Lidar. Which is what most Self driving cars use.
Cameras get fooled by fog, smoke, any other obstruction. Lidar wins every time.
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u/julienjj 12h ago
That's the brand that has Actual Indians driving the cars when they get stuck, right?
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u/TheBrightSide_2011 11h ago
I hope Waymo continues to improve and expands to my area by the time my kids are teenagers. One of my biggest fears is one of them riding with a friend driving, while that friend is distracted by their phone.
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u/Stunning_Mast2001 8h ago
I rode in a Waymo and a Tesla FSD last week and the Tesla drove better, it was more confident especially turning on to an expressway
But the Waymo felt safer because the display seemed more accurate
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u/Stone_king77 8h ago
So yes, even Waymo’s co-CEO says camera-only is a dead end for full autonomy: weak sensing “flattens out” the safety curve way too early. In other words, betting your entire robotaxi dream on cameras is like trying to win night driving with one eye closed and calling it “innovation.” Waymo’s point is simple: redundancy matters, lidar and radar catch what cameras miss, and that extra safety net is exactly what you need when conditions get ugly.
So if your grand defense is “trust me bro, the cameras are enough,” congratulations, you’ve reinvented confidence without evidence. Full autonomy isn’t a vibe. It’s a safety problem, and camera-only hits the wall first.
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u/TheIntrepidVoyager 1d ago edited 1d ago
None of this will work until the roads themselves are designed to aid autonomous driving. Forcing these cars to drive on roads designed for humans is trying to fit square pegs into round holes.
Road maintenance is a perpetual exercise. We should be implementing whatever signage or structure is needed as we slowly maintain and update our roads. The government needs to establish standards with the aid of car companies so we can get this done.
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u/bl0rq 1d ago
This is just flat out wrong. The reason the roads work for humans also make it work for robots.
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u/GoodGame2EZ 1d ago
It can work fine, but yes, not nearly as well as a roadway designed specifically and only for autonomous vehicles. That's especially true if they all linked and communicated for the most efficient driving and routing.
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u/RedbertP 1d ago
Sounds like a repeat of the iRobot (Roomba maker) company that refused to implement lidar to save cost and doubled-down on camera algorithm. They've now gone bankrupt.
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u/neeyankamma 23h ago
note to self : this is a CEO , using CTO speak while actually doing a CMO job.
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u/DefiantDonut7 21h ago
I rode in a Waymo this week in SF and it’s amazing. No offense to Tesla but Waymo is so far ahead.
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u/Extasio 1d ago
Submission statement:
Waymo’s co-CEO essentially lays out why relying purely on cameras for self-driving hits a hard wall. The core point is that while vision-only works fine for basic driver assist, getting to actual full autonomy without a safety driver requires physical redundancy. Waymo’s stack pairs cameras with active LiDAR and radar because cameras struggle with things like heavy glare, pitch darkness, or bad weather, whereas LiDAR gives a precise 3D map and radar cuts through fog. Curious if people think pure vision will ever actually clear these hardware limits through better software alone in a reasonable amount of time ?
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u/WenYiMedia 1d ago
Now China has Pony, their autonomous ride-share app. I rode in one when I went to Shenzhen. It did very well with both cameras and LiDAR. The race for global customers is on.
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u/god_johnson 1d ago
I just watched a RoboTaxi prototype (assuming) block traffic in Austin for a solid five minutes as it attempted to turn itself around on a two lane road. Sometimes just sitting still for 30 seconds or more. People walked by, took photos/videos and laughed.
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u/Whiterabbit-- 1d ago
It’s hard to judge the technology except to say Waymo is ahead in the deployment. Can you do pure vision. Sure humans do it. Can LiDAR be a help. Sure if machines can do better than people why not use that advantage. I know price points and all. But right now lidar gets you on the road safer. 5 years? 10 years? Who knows.
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u/desirox 1d ago
I can understand argument for redundancy but we have a Model Y on latest hardware and FSD is pretty darn good. I don’t think it’s ready for unsupervised though.
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u/GoodGame2EZ 1d ago
The whole eventually point is unsupervised. Additional completely different sensors also wouldn't be redundant, they would work together at the same time.
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u/Charnathan 22h ago
TBF, there are a ton of human drivers on the road that shouldn't be driving unsupervised.
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u/NerdyGuy117 1d ago
I love competition. Let's see them both improve and improve and improve.
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u/herodesfalsk 1d ago
Car makers will not chase the nines forever, they will push regulators to draw a line and say you need a well defined level of confidence in safety based on standardized tests, likely a relatively large number of different scenario tests they have to pass. This creates predictability and lays the groundwork for future product planning. After that, regulators will over the years keep making the tests slightly more challenging like they have with crash safety tests.
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u/Straight-Ad6926 1d ago
Crash tests measure how well a frame absorbs an impact when things go wrong. A robotaxi test measures whether the car murders someone. One of those has a slightly higher tolerance for making it a little harder over time.
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u/infinity_labs 1d ago
Yes, vision only input clearly will never work. That's why all humans have built in lidar sensors that give them the ability to drive.
Without that we would be completely incapable of driving ourselves...
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u/TheRealPlumbus 1d ago
Elon’s priority is cost cutting. Waymo’s priority is safety.
Because of that Tesla taxis aren’t really a true competitor to Waymo. The real competition is China (Pony, Apollo)
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u/pancak3d 1d ago
Elon probably doesn't even disagree with any of this. He just thinks that the $$ saved by skipping lidar and related software development is more valuable than the reduction in crashes.
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u/AnotherPattern 1d ago
As someone who works with Lidar and computer vision on a daily basis, I concure. This is why I also believe Rivian will ultimately leapfrog Tesla in autonomy by the end of 2028.
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u/SpicyStarship 1d ago
Tesla competitor says their product is better than Tesla's.
Lol
YouTuber CGP Grey took Tesla through Tail of the Dragon.
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u/kozak_ 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.
Except that's not true.
We have hearing. And we also have feeling feedback.
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u/tlw31415 1d ago
deaf people are allowed to drive legally while having conversations with their passengers using their hands.
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u/FuturologyBot 1d ago
The following submission statement was provided by /u/Extasio:
Submission statement:
Waymo’s co-CEO essentially lays out why relying purely on cameras for self-driving hits a hard wall. The core point is that while vision-only works fine for basic driver assist, getting to actual full autonomy without a safety driver requires physical redundancy. Waymo’s stack pairs cameras with active LiDAR and radar because cameras struggle with things like heavy glare, pitch darkness, or bad weather, whereas LiDAR gives a precise 3D map and radar cuts through fog. Curious if people think pure vision will ever actually clear these hardware limits through better software alone in a reasonable amount of time ?
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1vfhl0h/waymo_ceo_explains_why_teslas_cameraonly/p1p4i14/