Tesla vs Waymo Approach

Debate over vision-only versus multi-sensor approaches, Tesla's decision to not use lidar, comparisons of safety records, discussion of whether Tesla can catch up to Waymo's technology lead

The debate over autonomous driving centers on the technological divide between Waymo’s multi-sensor fusion and Tesla’s controversial vision-only strategy. While some argue that Tesla’s rejection of expensive lidar was a necessary business move to ensure vehicle affordability and massive scalability, others view it as a historic blunder that leaves the system unable to navigate the "long tail" of rare, complex road events. Proponents of Waymo point to a more comfortable, demonstrably safer rider experience backed by redundant hardware, yet Tesla fans highlight the impressive real-world performance of recent software updates as evidence that vision-only can achieve parity. Ultimately, the discussion reflects a fundamental disagreement over whether the path to full autonomy requires the conservative precision of specialized sensors or the aggressive, data-driven approach of mimicking human vision.

View on HN · Topics

Obviously there is a huge amount of money and effort being spent on automated driving. But I cannot help thinking that this perception technology will prove very useful for robotics in general, factory, home, in space, etc. Car dynamics are fast enough to be useful across a huge number of domains.

In some sense, the visionaries in this space are not thinking big enough. I want visions of mobility with a totally different size, look, speed, etc. autonomous Golf carts? tuktuks? A moving autonomous bicycle carrier? etc

Like imagine a low speed, electric, autonomous, golf-cart-only lane at every train station, for the last mile.

The lead that Waymo has acquired in perceiving its driverless car's environment will be almost impossible to kill. In about 5 years, it'll be like NVidia and CUDA. Tesla's choice to abandon lidar will be one of the biggest oof in business history.

View on HN · Topics

Tesla never had lidar so they didn't abandon it.

Also, Tesla started FSD in 2016. The very core of their strategy was (and is) to sell $40k car with hardware capable of running FSD.

Cameras are super cheap, FSD chip is reasonably inexpensive. Lidar is not. Maybe today the cost isn't completely prohibitive (I think it still is, because you need multiple lidars) but it certainly was for the first 8 years of FSD program.

Tesla just didn't have the luxury of adding $50k to the cost of the car for the hardware, the way Waymo did. And they didn't have sugar daddy (Google) willing to burn several billions a year for many years.

So the Waymo approach was not an option for Tesla.

And given that in Austin they just reached parity with Waymo (i.e. completely unsupervised robotaxi service), they are not doing badly.

View on HN · Topics

> Tesla's choice to abandon lidar will be one of the biggest oof in business history.

Why? They have started unsupervised taxi rides in Austin. One of their goals was affordability, and their cars are massively more affordable.

View on HN · Topics

I remember GM cars in Herzliya, Israel with cables and cameras held by duct tape circa 2019 after Andrej Karpathy already presented end to end neural network training for Autopilot in Tesla. Looked like very late to the party.

View on HN · Topics

This is a business with winner-take-all characteristics. Cruise was unlikely to leapfrog Waymo. So it makes the case for continuing to throw money at this very unconvincing.

Cruise was always destined to be "like Waymo, but worse". Tesla, on the other hand, is taking a very different path than Waymo, they have a chance at beating Waymo at their own game and even if they don't beat Waymo, they can be a winner in some specific niche. (For the record, I'm a fan of Waymo.)

View on HN · Topics

What path is that?
Their self driving took a huge step back when they dropped Mobileye and honestly I don't think it's been the same since.

View on HN · Topics

The ambiguity in the title is going to get a lot of the "skeptics" who have remained in denial about this to assume it's some kind of admission that they haven't been autonomous this whole time.

It's weird how many people there are like that still.

But what they mean is that they are putting the new release into production (without backup drivers). They have been fully autonomous for many years.

View on HN · Topics

"leaving nothing to the imagination of a single lens."

Nice dig at Tesla.

View on HN · Topics

I hope this prods Tesla to up their game. I love my Teslas but if Waymo’s approach is shown to be truly better then I’d happily switch to a car that used their tech. For now I have no choice but to stick with the self-driving that’s available for personal cars. Hopefully Waymo works on licensing their tech for other manufacturers and expanding their geographical coverage.

View on HN · Topics

Elon in shambles

> Our experience as the only company operating a fully autonomous service at this scale has reinforced a fundamental truth: demonstrably safe AI requires equally resilient inputs. This deep understanding of real-world requirements is why the Waymo Driver utilizes a custom, multi-modal sensing suite where high-resolution cameras, advanced imaging radar, and lidar work as a unified system. Using these diverse inputs, the Waymo Driver can confidently navigate the "long tail" of one-in-a-million events we regularly encounter when driving millions of miles a week, leaving nothing to the imagination of a single lens.

View on HN · Topics

Waymo is absolutely delighting in their luck that Elon is so stubborn that he has kept Tesla from being anywhere close to catching up.

View on HN · Topics

Truly. I don't understand why Tesla fans think camera/lidar fusion is unsolvable but camera/camera fusion is a non-issue.

View on HN · Topics

Add a tow hitch to Waymos and any car can be autonomous!

View on HN · Topics

Nuanced point: Even if vision alone were sufficient to drive, adding sensors to the cars today could speed up development. Tesla‘s world model could be improved, speeding up development of the vision only model that is truly autonomous.

View on HN · Topics

I know it's "illegal" and technically sold as FSD (assisted), but just 2 days ago I was in a friend's Model Y and it drove from work to my house (both in San Jose) without any steering wheel or pedal touch, at all. And he told me he went to Palm Springs like that too.

I shit on Tesla and Elon on any opportunity, and it's a shame they basically have the software out there doing things when it probably shouldn't, but I don't think they're that far behind Waymo where it really matters, which is the thing actually working.

View on HN · Topics

Elon cult members still to this day will tell me that because humans only use vision to drive all a Tesla needs is simple cameras. Meanwhile, I've been driven by Waymo and Tesla FSD and Waymo is by far my pick for safety and comfort. I actually trusted the waymo I was in, while the Tesla I rode in we had 2 _very_ scary incidents at high speeds in a 1 hour drive.

View on HN · Topics

> The problem is that sensors are worthless

Well, in TFA the far more successful manufacturer of self driving cars is saying you're wrong. I think they're in much better position to know than you :)

View on HN · Topics

I've long expected Waymo's approach to prevail simply because - aside from whether vision-only proves good enough to some standard - it will be easy to lobby for regulations that favor the more conservative approach.

But I also don't think we can take anything from what Waymo claims about the feasibility of vision-only.

Summarizer