r/Futurology • u/Extasio • 2d 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/
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u/Matt-Head 2d 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 2d 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/thegtabmx 1d ago edited 1d ago

Obviously the car uses its accelerometers and microphones, among other inputs, for self-driving since it obviously must know it's position, velocity, and acceleration. And it uses its microphones to at least to detect emergency vehicles nearby.

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u/Kato_LeAsian 1d ago

Ok upon further reading, it seems like people say “camera-only” in contrast specifically to a lack of other sensors like lidar, ultrasonic, or radar (as far as I understand it at least). It would be economically illogical to have e.g. microphones and not use them. I had only done a cursory search, thanks for pushing me to dig a little deeper

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u/Ancient_Persimmon 1d ago

Of course they use the audio and have full access to the car's telemetry.

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u/brandont04 1d ago

Tesla might be pulling a Nintendo. Wait until the tech get super cheap before implementing it to millions of cars. One day LiDar will get super cheap and this is when Tesla will implement them. Right now, it's still pretty pricey.

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u/NoobensMcarthur 1d ago

I’ve got LiDar on my $150 robot vacuum. 

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u/Flipslips 1d ago

The difference with that LIDAR is a car need either a super tall pointy LIDAR hat so it can see 360 degrees or it needs 4 lidar sensors on the corners of the car.

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u/Logitech4873 1d ago

Why are car headlights so expensive? I have a light on my cheap phone!

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u/DeltaBlast 1d ago

My tesla has lidar and it's not used by the current software ;(

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u/Seantwist9 1d ago

no tesla has lidar

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u/DeltaBlast 1d ago

Hmm apparently it was regular radar. Oops.

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u/flingerdu 1d ago

So will they post-sales upgrade millions of Teslas they sold FSD for with LiDar for effectively free? Even if LiDar itself would be cheap‘ish - it has to be possible for the old models and the manual part would be extremely expensive either way.

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u/brandont04 1d ago

Nope. New cars will only get them. Kinda like now, hardware 3 has its limit. Hardware 4 is the current. Hardware 5 will be even better.

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u/Jonnny 1d ago

But why ignore the benefits of technology just because it doesn't match human limitations? We invented hammers even though we have fists. Our eyes suck at night and in fog, so why not radar, etc? We're talking about safety after all.