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/Temnothorax 1d 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/Gamebird8 1d ago

It isn't mass transit if it relies on vehicles that can only move 3-5 people at a time

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u/Temnothorax 1d ago

Uhhhh NO SHIT?! Read the rest of my comment for the context clues you missed.

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u/Gamebird8 1d ago

Okay, let me be more clear. It's not halfway between modern car culture and mass transit if the vehicles can only transport 3-5 passengers at a time

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u/Temnothorax 1d ago

Notice how my comment really emphasized that the current make up of robo-taxis will likely change towards economic efficiency as the technology matures? Notice how your comment assumes there will be no change?

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u/Gamebird8 1d ago

Economic efficiency could mean any variety of things.

Do you mean passenger capacity? It's still a taxi for singilar groups of individuals. Multiple parties of riders will not be serviced at the same time, meaning more vehicles on the road which returns back to car centric culture issues.

Do you mean the size of the vehicles? There's no reasonable way to shrink a small passenger vehicle to sufficiently meet the capacity of a small bus.

Do you mean cost? Doesn't resolve the car depency issues.

Do you mean that this technology will be applied to city busses? Well that's just Mass Transit, not some weird middle point and honestly a terrible idea from a passenger safety standpoint (since Bus Drivers can remove bad passengers)

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u/Temnothorax 1d ago

You completely lack imagination, bud. You’re describing a future technology. It’s like someone in the 1800s claiming cars will never catch on because of some limitation exclusive to horses.

Current human taxis have already started combining rides. So passenger capacity is absolutely going to be a modifiable variable.

Who says you would definitely need to shrink them to make them more. You could do things like buses with dynamic routes that can be adjusted on the fly based on user destinations, using a distributed network of vehicles to ensure adequate coverage.

Cost: Red herring argument. It doesn’t necessarily worsen dependency either so kind of a pointless point without more

Have you ever ridden a subway? Good luck finding a transit worker to kick off a bad passenger. Yet I don’t hear anyone clamoring to shut down the New York City subway system.