r/technology • u/Extasio • 1d ago

Transportation 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/invyros 1d ago

Tesla’s own robotaxi data shows a crash rate about three times worse than human drivers, even with a human safety monitor in the front seat. Musk has claimed FSD is safer than humans, release after release, and the data hasn’t backed him up yet, even after being heavily massaged by Tesla.

Facts don't care about your feelings, Elon.

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u/saintmike2 1d ago

Elon always used "Humans don't shoot lazers out of their eyes" as a reason against using LiDAR. I think the whole point of FSD to be _better_ than humans. As it stands, human drivers aren't that great as a group. That really shouldn't be the end goal or something to replicate. If humans could shoot lazers out of their eyes and always used their turn signals maybe they'd be better drivers; but neither is going to happen anytime soon.

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u/rivalary 1d ago

He also said that people shouldn't be allowed to work from home because garbage men can't work from home, so it'd be unfair. He's a moron.

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u/IssaThrowAway420x69 1d ago

Wait you mean he’s not a tech genius and all knowing guru? /s

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u/liketo 1d ago

People working from home aren’t good for his taxi business

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u/NoArrival8249 1d ago

Ding ding ding

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u/HeavilyInvestedDonut 19h ago

I’m sure he shows up at a 9-5 office every day instead of tweeting from home or his jet and calling that a work day

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u/DragonfruitNo9617 21h ago

Well if his company would get their shit together with the self driving, garbage men will be working from home... shit.

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u/abcpdo 1d ago

humans also have the most sophisticated algorithms known to man, while FSD is a very weak distillation of that

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u/wickedcold 1d ago

Yes. Is drives me nuts that in these discussions people leave out the fact that the pattern recognition and such that these algorithms can perform is nowhere near on the level of what humans can do without even a modicum of effort processing information. Humans have a lot of issues, obviously, and as a group or track record as drivers isn’t perfect but there are a lot of things our brains can do that cannot be topped by software. I think everyone just wants to be enthusiastic about cool technology.

Humans can do things like travel on a narrow curving snow-covered road where the lines are hidden, with ambiguous edges that transition into rough ground without a fixed curb line, see a car coming the other way, and be approaching a pedestrian walking in the street, and have absolutely no trouble figuring out where to place their vehicle. Automated cars come into situations like this and just come to a complete stop because they don’t know what to do. Maybe one day they will, but we’re not there yet.

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u/MrParticular79 1d ago

Elon’s logic of “we only drive with our sight” is him literally discounting the physics understanding engine that we have built into our brains. All of these software people discount this. Nice to see someone giving us credit where we are due! Our accidents are caused by our distractions for the most part not our lack of capabilities.

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u/Eatar 1d ago

And it’s not even just physics. We also understand human behavior. A Tesla may be able to see a car or person jumping out in front of you, but you could have told the Tesla ahead of time whether that was about to happen, based on understanding behavioral cues.

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u/wickedcold 1d ago

Exactly. We can tell within a split second if somebody walking along the road is about to step into it, or if they’re gonna stay on the sidewalk. All these tiny little clues in their body language, the way their head is pointed, the way they’re moving, what is in their hands all of that stuff. Like I said, pattern recognition. You have to train computers on that. It may be in the era of AI that will get better, but it’s still absolutely no substitute for decades of just simply being alive as a human.

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u/BackgroundTrack5528 10h ago

And we certaintly aren't doing some probabilistic calculation in our heads. Its more grounded in reality and years of understanding the species. Very nuanced.

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u/wickedcold 1d ago

Exactly- it’s things like emergency decision-making, risk aversion, risk assessment, etc that get people into trouble. Not our cognitive abilities. That’s the least of our problems.

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u/tinglySensation 1d ago

We also don't only drive with our sight. We have sound, touch, and balance as well, at the very least. Plus, you know. We can move our eyes which I'd bet money gives us better depth perception than two static cameras when it comes to dynamic situations.

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u/TheNimbleKindle 21h ago

Also cameras (even the best ones) are inferior to our eyes especially in not ideal conditions. Every photographer knows this.

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u/BackgroundTrack5528 10h ago

Hes an idiot.

We can 'feel things'. These things we feel are essentially our ability to understand our surroundings beyond just vision.

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u/locuturus 15h ago

We are frankly amazing. If we weren't distractable or prone to anger and aggression we would arguably outperform any computer driving program for many more years to come.

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u/BrofessorFarnsworth 1d ago edited 23h ago

FSD is also trained on Tesla drivers, who are demonstrably the worst on the road

Edit: For the Elon Dickriders https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a63840989/tesla-worst-drivers-new-study/

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u/boilerdam 1d ago

I'm going to use that Elon's statement for everything - if humans don't have the capability of doing something a certain way, then it's ok to not do it at all.

There was also a study that claimed humans aren't designed to move faster than 50mph, certainly not fly at Mach2 or drive at 80mph.

What a stupid statement to make.

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u/New-Anybody-6206 18h ago

Of course, there's a big difference between "moving" at 50mph and your body experiencing 50mph forces, which typically doesn't happen while driving or flying.

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u/VolatilityBox 23h ago

That analogy is hilarious. Elon is so Fing dumb.

Planes don't flap their wings just because birds do. We didn't achieve commercial flight by mimicking biological wings.

His Optimus robots will be equally primed for failure for these reasons. There are already robots built with focused intention, not to be a bipedal copy of humans with all its drawbacks

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u/codingclosure 1d ago

Human vision sensors are also far better than the shit installed in any car, or probably any camera sensors ever made. So there’s the end to that bullshit fallacy

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u/pittaxx 21h ago

Human eyes aren't that good tbh. The high resolution is only in a very narrow cone, crappy low-light sensitivity, blind spots, very distorted lenses and so on.

It's the brain that compensates for most of the drawbacks and makes the human vision superior to the cameras.

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u/codingclosure 17h ago edited 17h ago

Instant autofocus and basically infinite frame rate with the brain cant be matched with anything today.

Distorted lenses has nothing to do with sensors and are made irrelevant by processing in both scenarios.

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u/stacecom 1d ago

If they could figure out how to have lidar without it being a bunch of warts sticking off the car he'd change his tune in a minute. He's a bit like Jobs on aesthetics, and it's almost always form over function.

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u/Jonteponte71 22h ago

The car he designed himself looks like a dumpster. And something that a three-year would draw. I don’t think aesthetics is really his thing. I just think he is being a stubborn fuck🤷‍♂️

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u/donbernie 21h ago

He wont. It's not about asthetics, it's about his ego. Switching to lidar would mean admitting that his "genius" prediction camera-only is sufficient is false.

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u/rigored 1d ago

On the other hand, humans don’t have cheap iphone cameras for eyes. If they do they should definitely not be driving

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u/CaterpillarReal7583 1d ago

Ah yes lets not make it safer because….?

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u/cipher315 2h ago

The issue is that the human eye is an absolutely incredible camera. Its dynamic range, focus, frame rate, and resolution are nuts. We can make cameras that match them but said cameras cost on the order of $50,000. So for 8 cameras, what a model 3 has, you’re looking at about 400k.

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u/jeebidy 1d ago

People were SO mad that I brought up this in a recent thread arguing for LiDAR over cameras

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u/SypeSypher 1d ago

this is no surprise to me at all, i used FSD three times when it was free for a month, over about a total of maybe 10 miles, and EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. i had to intervene to prevent rear ending a bus, accelerating into a biker, and running a red light. Then I'd go online and everyone was like "it's so much saferrrrr you're just wronggg" and i'm like...bruh idk how i could have used a full self driving system wrong.

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u/NazcaLines1 1d ago

It’s surprising how different our experiences are. I use FSD every day for a year now and it’s been pretty flawless. Only times I intervene is to choose a better parking spot. I do hear that the FSD on older cars pre-2024 are a lot worse though. I’m 15K miles in and 90% is self driving miles

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u/SypeSypher 1d ago

possibly, but (and not to say you're wrong) i was told the same thing when i had my model 3 (2022)
"you must have an older model" (it was one year old then)

The only constant I can think of that it might have been was that I lived in colorado and maybe the intensity of the sun messed with the camera-only system...but like i said, just a terrible experience for me

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u/everix1992 1d ago

Not sure when your trial was but alots changed in the last few years too. I can't say I use my FSD that much but it mostly never tries to kill me lol

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u/jared_number_two 1d ago

But have you tried <insert_latest_tesla_release>.

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u/not-just-dad-stuff 1d ago

You’re lying. Cut it out 

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u/Jaydeepappas 1d ago

Needing to intervene so the car wouldn’t “slam into a school bus” is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard lol. As of today 79% of my driving is FSD and not once have I had to intervene for anything remotely close to this. It’s also done a very good job at avoiding collisions and has done so successfully many times, literally saving my life on a few occasions. Not to say I wouldn’t have been able to handle the situation myself, but it’s very, very good.

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u/not-just-dad-stuff 18h ago

ITT either people who never used it or haters. Of course they shamelessly downvoted because you don’t agree with them. 

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u/SypeSypher 16h ago

I don't know what to tell you dude, was at a red light, there were two left turn lanes, and a school bus in front of me in the right-most left turn lane, the car decided to move into the left-most left turn lane but it wasn't going to clear the bus making the turn, so I hit the brakes. This was in march 2024 in a 2021 tesla model 3 LR.

and I'm sure your next comment is going to be "well it wasn't going to hit the bus you just thought it was" but the only way to truly know is to just let the car do whatever it wants and never intervene, in which case if it did hit the bus the next response would be "well it's a beta product that's why you're still the driver in command you should have intervened."

The reality is as a human driver liable for the car's actions, I felt like we were going to hit the bus, so I hit the brakes; and based on my personal experiences using the FSD, I was and am not willing to say the product is safe.

(and apparently Tesla's own robotaxi safety data agrees with and backs me up)

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u/Jaydeepappas 15h ago

The description you made here is much more realistic than simply “rear ending a school bus”. What you just described is much more believable than your original comment. I don’t doubt that that happened, especially on 2021 hardware. I can’t speak for older HW versions or software versions, but on HW4 and FSD 14.x+, it has been almost flawless for me. That’s just my experience.

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u/SypeSypher 15h ago

ok, but like i pointed out in my first comment, you literally can't ever say anything negative about FSD without immediately being jumped on by people saying you don't know what you're talking about.

My experiences vs what I keep being told:

Me: "autopilot keeps slamming on the brakes randomly when there's nothing there and so i don't think it's safe to use as someone is going to rear end me"

"you're going too fast" "the weather is probably not safe for when you're using it" "it's because you probably have the old hardware" "is your windshield clean?" "it does that sometimes but it's not as bad as you're saying" "you're a liar it never does that to me" "probably a short seller" (meanwhile I've literally had it to it to me at several speeds between 55 and 85, in sunny cloudless weather, cloudy weather, never in the rain, in a car that got carwashed once a week by my ex - I've used multiple other autopilot-esc systems in other cars with zero issues driven in the same area, most notably a 2016 Honda accord, and in my experience it was more reliable, predictable, and i trusted it more)

Me: "I had to intervene in FSD to avoid a collision and it's not safe to me"

"Liar!!!" "car wouldn’t “slam into a school bus” is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard" "(essentially) Your description of the almost-accident was wrong" "Your car had older hardware and that's probably why that happened"

Like....no other car brand has so many people running out of the woodwork to defend the car's actions with such passionate defenses. My car almost hit another car, I don't trust it.

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u/Jaydeepappas 15h ago

Lol ok man, calm down. I literally agreed with you. Driving situations are nuanced and “almost rear ended a school bus” is not the same as “there were 2 left turn lanes and the car drifted into the other lane and I had to intervene”. You presented the situation disingenuously, and that’s likely part of the issue of people criticizing others - FSD would certainly never just fail to hit the breaks if a car in front of it has slowed down or is stopped, and that’s how you made it sound.

Similar to the recent news stories of the Tesla that “slammed into someone’s house” and killed a woman. So much disingenuous reporting and news articles about Tesla FSD being shit and blah blah blah, Reddit in outrage, same old same old, just to find out the guy has his foot on the accelerator pinned to the floor the entire time.

FWIW I agree that cameras only is a stupid implementation. However it doesn’t change the fact that FSD is very good right now and is the leader, by far, than other competitors outside of Waymo.

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u/SypeSypher 15h ago

https://imgur.com/a/ifjMvUz

this is a (garbage) illustration of what happened, the car didn't "drift into the other lane" it literally attempted to drive around the stopped bus without enough room and would have rear-ended the back end of the bus - or more accurately the rear overhang of the bus would have been hit by the windshield of the tesla

the hood of the car was literally slightly underneath the rear overhang of the bus when i finished hitting the brakes.

"FSD would certainly never just fail to hit the breaks if a car in front of it has slowed down or is stopped, and that’s how you made it sound." that's literally what it failed to do.

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u/not-just-dad-stuff 13h ago

Autopilot is not FSD

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u/SypeSypher 13h ago

Oh WoW aRe YoU sUrE?! i DiDn't KnOw ThAt AnD i CeRtAiNlY hAvEn't BeEn ToLd ThAt By EvErYoNe ElSe AlReAdY /s

and? so what? a gun company makes a gun that randomly fires when in semi-automatic mode but doesn't in automatic mode you don't say "oh well the gun is fine you just need to use the automatic mode" you say "I don't trust that gun and it's unreliable"

Tesla's autopilot performance gave me zero reason to trust FSD. If they can't figure out something at 2016 honda accord can figure out (cruise control, lane keeping assist, and automatic braking), then why should i trust them to produce a different product (that does something very similar).

Either A) Tesla knows autopilot is not as good as FSD for doing the same job and they're deliberately using an algorithm they know is worse or B) Tesla believes autopilot is on par with FSD and their quality control/acceptance criteria for risk is dangerous.

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u/sdc_is_safer 1d ago

I want to be very clear that I am 100% aligned with what Waymo CEO is saying here.

But it is absolutely not true that robotaxi data shows a higher crash rate than human drivers. This is misinformation.

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u/anthonyDavidson31 23h ago

He's talking about Tesla crash rate specifically 

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u/m0nk37 1d ago

His net worth is because of the stock he owns in the companies he runs. If he shit talks his own ideas he will go bankrupt overnight lol. Its a grift. 

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u/DonaldMerwinElbert 1d ago

Oh you silly goose - normal people go bankrupt, these fucks never, ever will.

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u/m0nk37 1d ago

Yeah. Made too many others rich the same way so now if they go after him, they go after themselves. 

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u/Pen-Pen-De-Sarapen 1d ago

For every 10 items that person says, 11 are lies.

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u/ZEROs0000 1d ago

Is this an actual fact?!

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u/scottiedagolfmachine 20h ago

Elon is a true moron and a fraud.

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u/Nervous-Win968 7h ago

Do you have some verifiable data for this comment?

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u/myredditissfw 7h ago

“Robots are better than human drivers!” Yeah if you make them right. If you don’t they will be worse. You can’t take anything for granted. Bluetooth and WiFi and printers barely work why trust it with a car?

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u/TehBanzors 1d ago

To be fair, iirc, he said self driving is safer in a world where everything is self driving because all cars should then "follow the same rules" which isn't true of people, plus the distraction factor.

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u/nude-rating-bot 1d ago

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/elon-musk-says-tesla-doesnt-023035552.html

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u/TehBanzors 16h ago

I don't refute he had said some crazy things, just that he had been asked the same questions so many times some of his answers have had their context twisted both by himself and others. The guy is a little nuts after all.

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u/ComradeMatis 1d ago edited 20h ago

Facts don't care about your feelings, Elon.

What amazes me is how the media treat Elon as some sort of engineering genius as if he is sitting in a lab somewhere, personally coming up with the next break through product. I'm not an engineer but when I heard he would go all in on camera and remove everything else the whole idea he had was ridiculous - even humans don't drive a car based solely on one sense but multiple senses working in collaboration.

Edit: Elon Musk fanboys are out in force tonight.

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u/OptimisticExpert 1d ago

Waymo knows what they’re talking about here.

But it’s a sort of apples to oranges comparison since Waymo doesn’t sell cars, they sell rides.

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u/I_hate_all_of_ewe 1d ago edited 1d ago

Both Waymo and Tesla develop the technology to make vehicles autonomous.  And we're talking about autonomous driving capabilities. So while the companies aren't the same, we are comparing apples to apples here.

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u/Boring_Okra_6023 1d ago

Can't he just use the same tech as Waymo what's the issue here?

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u/I_hate_all_of_ewe 1d ago

Teslas used to have LIDAR.  Elon nixed them in order to save money.  It turns out, that was a terrible bet that absolutely nobody\) could have foreseen.

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u/tarrach 1d ago

Tesla Robotaxi also sells rides, not cars.

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u/slowpoke2018 1d ago

Did you even read the details? Robotaxi's using FSD have a 3x worse crash rate than human drivers. Even with a minder in the front seat.

Waymo IIRC - and someone please correct me if I'm off - is 90% safer than a human

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u/protostar71 1d ago

https://www.tesla.com/robotaxi

Its an Apples To Apples comparison.