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How does Tesla FSD fair against the Waymo self driving taxis? I'm curious about whether self driving is still an impossible task right now, or if it's just a m

by ENGNR 2y ago

How does Tesla FSD fair against the Waymo self driving taxis? I'm curious about whether self driving is still an impossible task right now, or if it's just a matter of quality between companies - in which case it's possibly a fair bet being made by Telsa execs that they'll bridge the gap given time and money.

jfoster 2y ago
Currently, it's definitely less reliable than Waymo, but is available anywhere in the US or Canada, and is coming to more countries soon. The other factor is the trajectory of each endeavour. Waymo are gradually adding more cities, and Tesla FSD is gradually getting more reliable. Both of them are going to be perfectly fine self-driving systems at some point in the future. It's an open question as to when Waymo will be able to scale up substantially, and when Tesla FSD will be reliable enough to operate as a robotaxi service. You can see lots of videos of both on YouTube to gauge where they're up to. If you find accounts that are focused on each, you can search by oldest videos to see the progress that's been made and extrapolate from there.
xnx 2y ago
Waymo does 50K paid trips per week without a driver behind the wheel. Tesla does zero. Waymo is a business. Tesla FSD is currently just a tech demo.
- FrojoS 2y ago
  And Tesla is selling FSD for thousands of dollars per activation. Waymo technology is awesome, but I'm pretty sure, right now it's a money-losing business for its owner, Google.
- golol 2y ago
  Lol I'm pretty sure FSD generates more revenue than Waymo.
matthewdgreen 2y ago
The Waymo cars drive themselves without (in person) supervision. As best as I can tell from three rides, they do it perfectly. However the range is limited to city streets in a few cities, no interstates at all (they are adding this soon.) The Tesla FSD even at v12 can go about five minutes before I have to intervene. If you’re extremely tolerant and don’t care what other drivers think (eg weird slow behavior at stop signs, sudden rapid bursts of acceleration in inappropriate places, turn signal decisions that a human driver wouldn’t make) I bet you could push it up to 10 or 15 minutes without intervention. I don’t have enough courage to genuinely let FSD loose on city streets without intervening. More generally, Waymo’s approach is to own the hardware and heavily supervise it with remote workers who can instruct it how to deal with complicated situations (eg lane blocked by emergency vehicle.) Tesla has none of that infrastructure yet. It’s sort of hard for me to see a business model where (1) the user owns the hardware, (2) there are necessary remote human beings monitoring and advising the car in sticky situations (that costs money), and (3) a third party company takes on the liability risk. The idea that you’re going to “rent out” your personal car during the day runs into the question of who pays when someone gets killed/hurt, and that immediately runs into the question of how a remote operator deals with the problem of malfunctioning hardware it doesn’t own (and why it needs to borrow other folks’ personal hardware at all.)
- epolanski 2y ago
  #2 doesn't sound too bad if you only need to intervene at times, the number of workers is way smaller than the one of taxis.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- bdlowery 2y ago
  > The Waymo cars drive themselves without (in person) supervision. As best as I can tell from three rides, they do it perfectly. I drove in a Tesla with FSD 12.4 3 times and it was perfect. it doesn’t mean anything.
  - 2y ago
l33tman 2y ago
Tangentially, but I'm wondering how the calculations really go with the robo-taxis. Taxidrivers here are probably getting $5/h or so and it's a job you can get without any skills at all, you don't need to speak the language and you don't need any tests, you just need to be able to sit down, input stuff on a GPS and drive. So there's an infinity of people to employ if you're a cab company. Neither Waymo nor Tesla want to give the tech away for free. Is there a market (without corporate subsidies from Waymo etc)?
- rcxdude 2y ago
  It works out pretty well in theory. Even at minimum wage the cost of the driver is a lot of the cost of the taxi ride. It does all hinge on the cost of the vehicles + the cost of monitoring + the cost of maintenance being low enough to offset this though. Cost of vehicle is higher in the case of waymo but even 3x the cost is still useful, cost of monitoring is probably still a bit high at the moment but is the main thrust of improving the tech, and maintenance is not necessarily much worse than a normal taxi.

by ENGNR 2y ago

jfoster 2y ago

Currently, it's definitely less reliable than Waymo, but is available anywhere in the US or Canada, and is coming to more countries soon. The other factor is the trajectory of each endeavour. Waymo are gradually adding more cities, and Tesla FSD is gradually getting more reliable. Both of them are going to be perfectly fine self-driving systems at some point in the future. It's an open question as to when Waymo will be able to scale up substantially, and when Tesla FSD will be reliable enough to operate as a robotaxi service. You can see lots of videos of both on YouTube to gauge where they're up to. If you find accounts that are focused on each, you can search by oldest videos to see the progress that's been made and extrapolate from there.

xnx 2y ago

Waymo does 50K paid trips per week without a driver behind the wheel. Tesla does zero. Waymo is a business. Tesla FSD is currently just a tech demo.

FrojoS 2y ago
And Tesla is selling FSD for thousands of dollars per activation. Waymo technology is awesome, but I'm pretty sure, right now it's a money-losing business for its owner, Google.
golol 2y ago
Lol I'm pretty sure FSD generates more revenue than Waymo.

matthewdgreen 2y ago

The Waymo cars drive themselves without (in person) supervision. As best as I can tell from three rides, they do it perfectly. However the range is limited to city streets in a few cities, no interstates at all (they are adding this soon.) The Tesla FSD even at v12 can go about five minutes before I have to intervene. If you’re extremely tolerant and don’t care what other drivers think (eg weird slow behavior at stop signs, sudden rapid bursts of acceleration in inappropriate places, turn signal decisions that a human driver wouldn’t make) I bet you could push it up to 10 or 15 minutes without intervention. I don’t have enough courage to genuinely let FSD loose on city streets without intervening. More generally, Waymo’s approach is to own the hardware and heavily supervise it with remote workers who can instruct it how to deal with complicated situations (eg lane blocked by emergency vehicle.) Tesla has none of that infrastructure yet. It’s sort of hard for me to see a business model where (1) the user owns the hardware, (2) there are necessary remote human beings monitoring and advising the car in sticky situations (that costs money), and (3) a third party company takes on the liability risk. The idea that you’re going to “rent out” your personal car during the day runs into the question of who pays when someone gets killed/hurt, and that immediately runs into the question of how a remote operator deals with the problem of malfunctioning hardware it doesn’t own (and why it needs to borrow other folks’ personal hardware at all.)

epolanski 2y ago
#2 doesn't sound too bad if you only need to intervene at times, the number of workers is way smaller than the one of taxis.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
bdlowery 2y ago
> The Waymo cars drive themselves without (in person) supervision. As best as I can tell from three rides, they do it perfectly. I drove in a Tesla with FSD 12.4 3 times and it was perfect. it doesn’t mean anything.
- 2y ago

l33tman 2y ago

Tangentially, but I'm wondering how the calculations really go with the robo-taxis. Taxidrivers here are probably getting $5/h or so and it's a job you can get without any skills at all, you don't need to speak the language and you don't need any tests, you just need to be able to sit down, input stuff on a GPS and drive. So there's an infinity of people to employ if you're a cab company. Neither Waymo nor Tesla want to give the tech away for free. Is there a market (without corporate subsidies from Waymo etc)?

rcxdude 2y ago
It works out pretty well in theory. Even at minimum wage the cost of the driver is a lot of the cost of the taxi ride. It does all hinge on the cost of the vehicles + the cost of monitoring + the cost of maintenance being low enough to offset this though. Cost of vehicle is higher in the case of waymo but even 3x the cost is still useful, cost of monitoring is probably still a bit high at the moment but is the main thrust of improving the tech, and maintenance is not necessarily much worse than a normal taxi.