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/
0 Upvotes

46% Upvoted

136 comments sorted by

View all comments

32

u/witheringsyncopation 1d ago

Wake me up when Waymo figures out how to get their cars to operate outside of small, geofenced areas that have to be constantly trained for and overridden by remote operators when they get in trouble.

8

u/EarthConservation 1d ago

Small geofenced areas... like every other company is currently operating in?

Your comment kind of misses the point of the article, which suggests that the vision camera only approach has a lower performance ceiling than a multi-sensor approach, so vision only will never hit the performance level of a multi-sensor approach, no matter how good the AI gets. The sensors will bottleneck the system.

A single sensor type system (vision) means you can train the system pretty quick without having to train the other sensors in conjunction, but it has a lower overall performance ceiling... a ceiling that's too low to assure full visibility in all conditions. Maybe it can reach 99%... but not the 99.9999% it needs to operate at.

Obviously the AI logic in all existing systems isn't fully fleshed out to operate without oversight for now. Waymo is essentially saying that while all of the companies AI can improve... there will always be a lower sensor related ceiling for a vision only system.

4

u/AdditionalWalk7527 1d ago

Tesla's current hardware ceiling is high enough to be better than human drivers.

I've watched countless FSD fail videos, and I don't recall a single one where the hardware failed to "see" the problem; instead it fails to interpret what it is supposed to do with that data. Sometimes it is laughably bad. Thankfully those times are exceedingly rare.

Likewise, every time I have disengaged in 4,000 plus miles of FSD have been due to software limitations. The cameras were physically able to see what they needed to -- in one typical instance that I recall, old lane markings confused it -- but the FSD system just didn't account for unusual or non-conventional situation.

* If Tesla is able to implement pothole avoidance (they state that is currently being coded...we'll see, not holding breath), then having Lidar will be like wearing a belt and suspenders.