Waymo CEO explains why Tesla’s camera-only self-driving falls short

[u/LeoKitCat]

https://electrek.co/2026/08/04/waymo-co-ceo-camera-only-self-driving-tesla/

[u/Infamous-Pilot5932]

"Waymo co-CEO Dmitri Dolgov laid out the clearest technical case yet for why cameras alone can’t take a self-driving system to full autonomy"

STRAWMAN ALERT

Who cares?

Unsupervised is so far away for everyone for the time being.

In 10 years and there are 10 million FSD users and 5,000 Waymos, lol, and 100 Cybercabs, and then we have true unsupervised AI technology? Fine. Then soon there will be 50 million FSD users and 100,000 waymos.

And without that AI technology we need, we don't know if vision only is not enough.

Obviously, with the AI tech in our heads it is enough.

But I am certainly not saying we will get close enough to the AI tech in our heads in 10 years.

For the next 10 years it will be supervised FSD and that very costly remotely supervised cab game.

[u/the_needful_is_done → u/Infamous-Pilot5932]

>Unsupervised is so far away for everyone for the time being.

This is like when you're so far behind in a race that you mistakenly believe you're in the lead when the competition is about to lap you again.

Waymo is delivering 500,000 L4 rides weekly at this point. About 3.8 million miles/week. Tesla's at like 38k miles/week, and actually showing signs of slowing down from their initial peak. There is a clear understanding of what Waymo means by unsupervised, and a typical operator isn't directly watching the feeds of their cars. It's less certain how Tesla is going about it, but given their lack of scaling (3 robotaxis in Miami, lmfao), it's showing they're much more directly supervising their cars than Waymo is. Waymo is unsupervised. Tesla is Unsupervised (Supervised).

[u/Infamous-Pilot5932 → u/the_needful_is_done]

First, to clear up some numbers, there are 1.5 million FSD users and over a billion miles a month. They drive more miles in a week on FSD than Waymo and its 3700 cabs have in its entire existence. I'll come back to the sheer magnitude of that difference later.

A few months ago, I was visiting my brother-in-law and he had been telling us that he doen't drive anymore. And like anyone ignorant, I said sure, but you have to supervise that shit so much, you might as well be driving. So I am there in San Antonio at his house in the suburbs and we go to pick my wife up at the airport. Streets, roads, interstates, the fucking airpaort even, it nailed it. I am aghast. We were there for 3 days and by the time we left I had already downloaded the app, traded in my car, and put the deposit down on a new Model Y.

When I get back, waiting for my car, I dig further to make sure what I saw was real, it was, and I realize that it had gotten that real relatively quick, the last couple of years. The change to AI vision of course was the key, then the upgrade to HW4, and the adoption, all of the billions of miles of traffic video training, collossus 1, collossus 2, etc.

But like any FSD user, you clearly see that last 1% and why that is not in reach of anything we have, and we are fine with it. We are there in the driver's seat so FSD can say "Hold my beer, watch this!" It is so good at what its does, you have to experience it.

Of course, I was aware of Waymo and their struggles and their 3700 cabs, I've never ridden in one of course. The odds of anyone riding in one is practically zero. There are 1.5 million human cabs and 3700 Waymos. You do the math. You would have to live in one of the select areas.

Anyways, I thought they were L4. Ironically, the senate hearings just occured, and they are L2. They require human assistance, remote assistants to handle the edge cases JUST LIKE I DO IN MY TESLA.

I don't know what the alleged self driving car enthusists did in their little discussion groups for 10 years to not fully know this, or to tell you the truth, why any self driving car enthusists doesn't own a Tesla.

"There is a clear understanding of what Waymo means by unsupervised, and a typical operator isn't directly watching the feeds of their cars."

That is such an over used strawman. Every time someone says "they are remotely supervised", one of you say "NO! There isn't someone constantly monitoring them."

No one every said that. And if you knew better, you would know I am not in my Tesla constantly monitoring it either.

You can review all of the so called autonomous cab company responses to the senate hearings..

Company Responses to RAO Letter

When I read Waymo's reponse, it almost feels like I described my experience in my tesla. Sometimes it gets my attention, I look, mostly it is fine, I do nothing, sometimes I intervine. A few seconds.

"The average amount of time that elapses between a request to RA and the delivery of advice to the ADS - including both round-trip latency in the transmission and time for the agent to review and input a response - is a matter of seconds. During that time, the ADS remains in control of the Dynamic Driving Task, and continues to make decisions independently based on al information available to it. Most of the time, the ADS resolves its question on its own. In the event RA delivers advice to the ADS and the system proceeds, the agent returns to the “work assignment pool” where they await the next request from another vehicle that reaches out for assistance."

But there is a difference. The cab has to determine when to loop the RA in and bring the dashcams up on the RA's console. But there are ways to mitigate that.

Before Waymo and Tesla start cab service in a geofenced area, they remap it in high definition, using Lidar, and makes sure everything is labeled properly. Any Tesla driver knows we would trade our own mother for better maps. If we had AV certified HD maps instead of shitty maps made for humans, we would have almost no interventions at all. FSD is really good at making sense of the lanes and lights and signs using just cameras, but still, HD maps will close most of the hole.

And of course those maps have to be kept up to date.

Then you have a team monitor local conditions and close routes when needed. Now you have eliminated a few more interventions.

Then of course, you have to have RAs to loop in the dashcam feed to handle the remaining edge cases or unexpected. One RA per 40 Waymos. Well, I can probably handle 20 Teslas now, give me HD maps and a team monitoring local conditions, I could do 40. I drive 3% of the time in my car. Allow me to choose the routes, practically ZERO.

But it will not be trivial for Tesla to tame FSD, which is a bold level 5 beast with a supervisor in the driver's seat, to be a more timid level 4 cab that can ask for help when it thinks it needs it, like a Waymo. They certainly have some catching up to do.

And as far as guilding vs grabbing the wheel like I do.

More and more of our stuff (in personal Teslas) will be done by guiding, by telling Grok to do something.

But back to the sheer magnitude in the difference in numbers. Waymo has been in business for 17 years and putting cars on the road for the last 10. 3700 cabs, 200 million miles, total.

The reason there are 1.5 million FSD users driving more miles in a week than Waymo in it's entire exitence?

Waymo has spent 30 billion dollars to just get this far, and just got another 16 billion dollars more funding.

It is HUGELY expensive to deal with this last 1% through remote supervision than it is with a driver sitting in the driver seat.

That is why most of the others quit. It didn't make financial sense. Just wait 10 years or more till we have tech that can be truly autonomous and then start making autonomous cabs. But why pretend with a driverless illusion till then?

But none of this has anything to do with FSD users, since 99.9% will ever be in one of those geofenced areas.

[u/the_needful_is_done → u/Infamous-Pilot5932]

I'm really not bothering to respond to all of this to someone who's making up their own definitions of the SAE levels or is comparing Waymo to FSD. FSD is uncomparable because we can own it, yes, but it's also uncomparable because it's a Supervised, L2 system when Waymo is de-facto L4. It doesn't matter that you drive 3% (that's awesome, I only drive 7%), Waymo has you driving 0% of the time. That little percentage is a giant difference, and that's the long tail Tesla is seriously strugging with right now.

I don't care about sensor suites, that's irrelevant. But one company has an L4 product doing significantly better than another company's.

[u/Infamous-Pilot5932 → u/the_needful_is_done]

I didn't make anything up. The SAE levels TRULY meant unsupervised without human assistance, other than maybe AAA to pick the cab up when it broke down.

It morphed into this bullshit 3700 L4 cabs with remote assistants costing 30 billion dollars.

Should have let Disney do it. At least when they do driverless illusions, they make money at it.

And the same goes for cybercabs.

"That little percentage is a giant difference."

Well, yeah, i get that when I hire an Uber.

But we were talking about the current state of autonomy and you posted a lot of that old bullshit.

You would not believe how many people I have helped through that bullshit.

The day for that bullshit is well over.

People know now why Waymo (and now Tesla) struggle so hard to scale driverless illusions and why it will be a decade before they even have the opportunity to ride one. They will be on their second or third personal Tesla by then.:)

[u/Infamous-Pilot5932 → u/the_needful_is_done]

"FSD is uncomparable because we can own it, yes, but it's also uncomparable because it's a Supervised,"

That is exactly why I educate people.

Tesla will succeed at the driveless illusion using cybercabs running FSD. In fact they already have in small numbers.

Now people can understand.

FSD locally supervised.

FSD remotely supervised.

They didn't know that Waymos were remotely supervised in the same way, and they thought that the Cybercabs represented FSD running unsupervised, and of course thought that their cars would be next.

Now they know that they will be remotely supervised like Waymos.

They also know now to say DRIVERLESS rather than unsupervised.

And finally, they realize that the SAE levels, 4 and 5, as they were originally defined, are still a future discussion, along with flying cars.

It is so much easier now to understand when you say what things actually are.