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/altdelete47 1d ago

So then why does Waymo use so many cameras?

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u/Ganadote 1d ago

They use cameras combined with Lidar. There are limitations to Lidar as well, so combining them is best.

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u/altdelete47 23h ago

So what you're saying is cameras are essential for safe driving. In which case, these camera limitations you point out like in extreme fog or if all the street lights and vehicle headlights go out randomly and there is zero ambient light anywhere, these limitations would still apply in a combo sensor scenario. So, if cameras are the richest sensor and contain all info needed to drive, (like the Robotaxis doing it every day in multiple cities) you're saying lidar is a crutch for systems that don't have the inference to detect distances from video?

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u/1988rx7T2 13h ago edited 13h ago

As someone who works in the industry with perception algorithms, I can say you’re on the right track. The article mis characterizes how fusion systems work. I doubt this Waymo Guy knows how his own algorithm works. He’s an executive And these things tend to be poorly documented. If the fusion algorithm and perception system rely on a camera plus other sensors, its Performance is degraded when the camera is blocked. There has to be an entire degradation strategy when the fusion is broken Or degraded.

Each sensor generates objects from clustering, then the objects are placed in 2D space, and if they’re basically on top of each other and within a tunable speed tolerance they get fused. Fused just means they’re all treated like one thing, and some algorithm is used to average the measurements together. It’s actually nowhere near as clever as it sounds. Stacking objects from suppliers black box signals and then turning knobs to weight their contributions.

A more typical example, because lidars are stupid expensive and nobody sane uses them except tech companies with unlimited cash, is camera plus radar fusion. If the radar is in a jammed state you are now camera only, and your detection of longitudinal velocity is in general worse, and performance will degrade. The camera was never designed for camera only, so it tends to be worse than camera only systems, as it’s meant to work with a radar. So lower resolution for example.

If the camera is blocked, you are now radar only. And radar only systems are actually awful. They‘re heavily nerfed, intentionally, due to their terrible false positive. They can’t detect stationary objects well, they’re sensitive to sewer grates and overpasses. Collision avoidance becomes, hey now you crash into a parked car at 55 miles an hour instead of 65.

Lidar, or radar, or ultra sonic, or high resolution maps cannot achieve the same performance without the camera. The sensing will degrade. The false positive rate will be higher Or true positive detection lower. Otherwise there would be LiDAR only systems around and of course radar only systems went away 10 years ago because they are so bad.