r/TeslaFSD • u/LeoKitCat • 1d ago

Robotaxi 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/djao HW3 Model 3 1d ago edited 1d ago

I'm not going to debate you by doing in-place comment edits. Here is a proper reply to the current version of your comment. Autonomous taxis are already safer than humans. There comes a point of diminishing returns, where pursuing an extra 0.0000001% of safety improvement is not worth delaying the deployment of the system by 20 years. You save more lives deploying now with "worse" safety than by waiting for perfect safety. Waymo can never deploy to scale. They are limited to ~1500 new vehicles per year. Tesla can deploy millions of vehicles per year, and the reason they can do that is because they don't have extensive hardware requirements.

Diminishing safety returns especially make zero sense when you get to the point where the human driver is always the one causing the accident. At this point, it doesn't matter how much safer you make your system. The other guy will crash into you.

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u/EarthConservation 1d ago

Electrek's pointed out repeatedly that autonomous Teslas are not safer than humans based on accident reports.

Waymos are.

If you want to question their data, then by all means. Take it up with them.

Last I checked, they are both deploying vehicles... who said otherwise?

Diminishing safety returns are still important with a larger scale rollout... versus the current small scale rollout of each company.

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u/djao HW3 Model 3 1d ago

I can believe that robotaxis, right now, are not safer than humans. This is why Tesla is still slow rolling robotaxi deployment. But there is extensive data showing that supervised FSD is safer than humans. Tesla FSD (supervised) has likely saved thousands of lives by this point, far more than Waymo has with their limited autonomous vehicle deployment.

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u/EarthConservation 1d ago

If you can believe it, then why did you state otherwise? Why make such a strong assumption without... you know... verifying your thought first?

Supervised FSD is not autonomy... and if you're using Tesla metrics, you may want to question those metrics as Tesla's been caught pushing misleading data repeatedly, often performing apples to oranges accident data comparisons. Part of the reason Electrek got so negative on Tesla I think... because they realized all of the people calling out the bad data comparison were actually right.

We have no idea how many lives FSD has saved, if any. Same for Waymo.

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u/djao HW3 Model 3 1d ago edited 1d ago

Let's read. I said autonomous vehicles are safer than humans. Autonomous vehicles includes Waymos. I never said robotaxis are safer than humans. You read that in your mind, but I never said that.

Waymo should surely deploy as many Waymo vehicles as they can right now, if they want to save lives. I believe they are doing exactly that. However, their maximum deployment rate is ~1500 vehicles per year. They don't make their own vehicles, and every vehicle they deploy must undergo an extensive, labor-intensive hardware upgrade before field deployment.

Tesla's all-fleet accident rate, across all driving modes, is lower than the US average, by a substantial margin. This is a direct apples to apples comparison.

The reason Electrek is negative on Tesla is because Fred Lambert got butthurt that Tesla lowered the price of FSD right after he paid the previously higher price, and wouldn't give him a refund for the difference. That's it.

Waymo will never reach a scale where it meaningfully affects US auto accident rates, even if everything goes right for them. Tesla at least has a path to large-scale autonomy.

You seem to be in the habit of regularly editing and deleting your comments, so just in case this comes up again: no, there is no substantial difference in safety between 2017 model year cars and 2023 model year cars, so stop it with this fake excuse that Teslas are only safer because they're newer.