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Alphabet is far ahead of Tesla in the category of "deploying a taxi network". No one can dispute that. They also use a different technology. What I don't know t

Alphabet is far ahead of Tesla in the category of "deploying a taxi network". No one can dispute that. They also use a different technology. What I don't know today is how fast can Waymo scale to more cities. I assume if Tesla cracks the "taxi network nut" they can scale faster and will catch up to Alphabet.

TulliusCicero 2y ago
Tesla seem stuck-ish to me. They do have some incremental improvements each year, but even after several years of development, their cars want to randomly run into parked cars and other stationary obstacles on a frequent basis. We're not talking about edge cases, your cars shouldn't be regularly trying to hit a concrete wall after this much engineering effort. Waymos do occasionally screw up, but if they did it as much as Tesla's FSD, it'd be chaos in the streets in SF, so it seems like it must be fairly infrequent.
- thegrim33 2y ago
  FWIW a quick google search turns up Waymo reporting they have 0.41 incidents with injuries per million miles driven [0], whereas Tesla vehicles using autopilot had 0.152 incidents with or without injuries, per million miles driven [1]. So Waymo has 2.7 times more incidents with injuries then Teslas using autopilot have incidents, with or without injuries. Maybe if I checked more sites they'd give different numbers, but from those initial numbers it seems your perception of reality of Waymo "screwing up" less is not accurate. [0] https://waymo.com/blog/2023/12/waymo-significantly-outperforms-comparable-human-benchmarks-over-7-million/#:~:text=When%20considering%20all%20locations%20together,2.78%20for%20the%20human%20benchmark https://waymo.com/blog/2023/12/waymo-significantly-outperfor...) [1] https://insideevs.com/news/720730/tesla-autopilot-crash-data-2024q1/#:~:text=The%20previous%20highest%20result%20was,miles%20driven%20per%20accident%20registered https://insideevs.com/news/720730/tesla-autopilot-crash-data....
  - ra7 2y ago
    This is a ridiculous, apples-to-oranges comparison. You’re comparing fully driverless miles to driver assist miles with humans actively preventing accidents without controlling for any variables.
  - TulliusCicero 2y ago
    This is an extraordinarily disingenuous comparison. A big reason why Tesla superfans have such a poor reputation is because of bad faith arguments like this that frequently pop up in these discussions. Tesla cars with FSD have a driver behind the wheel who can instantly take over if the car is about to crash into a stationary object. Any time a Tesla would've crashed into something an object but its human driver saved it, that doesn't count in stats like these. Many Tesla owners have reported that they have to regularly disengage FSD because it's trying to do something dangerous or looks like it's headed for a crash. In contrast, Waymo cars do not have a human who can take the wheel if they try to run into a wall. The closest equivalent is that if Waymo cars get confused and don't know how to proceed, they can stop, then phone home and ask a human navigator to give them 'advice' or a general path; these people don't directly control the car, they're more comparable to a human navigator in the front passenger seat. It's still human assistance obviously, but it's not gonna save the car from running into an object that it didn't think was there.
    - diebeforei485 2y ago
      > Many Tesla owners have reported that they have to regularly disengage FSD because it's trying to do something dangerous or looks like it's headed for a crash. With Tesla the responsibility is on the person in the driver's seat, so there is a (rightfully!) a bias for overreaction on the part of the driver. We will never know many of these disengagements were necessary. The only way to get a true comparison of data is to compare robotaxis with robotaxis.
      - TulliusCicero 2y ago
        It's true that not all of them would be crashes, but many would be, because, well, the car was about to crash. The car isn't just joking around when it swerves towards some parked cars. > The only way to get a true comparison of data is to compare robotaxis with robotaxis. 100% agreed. And so far, Tesla hasn't taken the step of actually letting the cars be driverless.
        diebeforei485 2y ago
- diebeforei485 2y ago
  I'm not sure how true this is anymore. FSD has improved significantly this year that they're on their new NN architecture. It's worth remembering that Waymo required their users to sign NDA's during beta, while the Tesla FSD beta was open to everyone with no NDA. So there was a lot more Tesla content being posted and going viral.
  - ra7 2y ago
    Waymo hasn’t required an NDA for at least a couple of years now. They only had a waitlist for access, you could share anything you want publicly.
    - diebeforei485 2y ago
      There were various stages of rollout. The earlier stages required an NDA, the later ones did not. Meanwhile Tesla hasn't required NDA's except for employees running internal builds.
      - ra7 2y ago
        Those NDAs ended a long time ago. Waymo has given close to 2 million rides since then. Everything’s out in the open.
        diebeforei485 2y ago
        The NDA's ended when they were confident enough in their system that the good press would outweigh the bad. So essentially we're comparing footage from Waymo when it was at the end stages of its development to footage from Tesla at the early stages of its development.
        ra7 2y ago
        We agree that Waymo's and Tesla's development stages are wildly different at this point.
lambdaone 2y ago
Remember that the passenger cars are not the only thing that can scale; if you can automate the mapping and data preparation part of the process sufficiently, you may even be able to reduce it to mostly a matter of driving a few sensor cars around for a few weeks; maybe even cars that are adapted versions of your normal taxi vehicles, but with a human driver behind the wheel while you are mapping. I would imagine that while Waymo's mapping efforts have been very human effort-intensive so far, they will be looking at developing this automatic map-making capability as a high priority for rolling out new cities. Scaling the rate of expansion is then mostly a matter of throwing hardware and compute at the problem.
mike_hearn 2y ago
Tesla is willing to sell to people who will pay $$$ for a self driving car. Waymo isn't. That's probably more important for now. Taxi drivers don't earn that much, and have some advantages AI can't easily replace (able to help with luggage, use petrol stations etc). Replacing them requires undercutting them which in turn means you can't generate a ton of revenue from that. Yet Waymo's business model, such that it is, has put them many billions into the red already. I wonder if anyone has done some ROI calculations and if so how long it'd take. The LIDARs alone would require a huge number of trips just to pay them off, then you have the cars, the decade+ of enormously high software development salaries... if Waymo were another YouTube where it could hide amongst Google's other profitable businesses that'd be one thing. As a separate business with its own accountings, how long will it take until it's turned a profit?
- threeseed 2y ago
  > Tesla is willing to sell to people who will pay $$$ for a self driving car The very low take-up rate of FSD during the trial period indicates that most people are buying Tesla's because they are arguably the best EV with the best charging network. Not because of FSD.
  - lanstin 2y ago
    Because the trial period showed that FSD will routinely try to kill you, on the routes I take around San Jose (interstate and normal roads). But having solar power and electric cars is awesome, and the car is a lot faster and more fun than my Prius was.

TulliusCicero 2y ago

Tesla seem stuck-ish to me. They do have some incremental improvements each year, but even after several years of development, their cars want to randomly run into parked cars and other stationary obstacles on a frequent basis. We're not talking about edge cases, your cars shouldn't be regularly trying to hit a concrete wall after this much engineering effort. Waymos do occasionally screw up, but if they did it as much as Tesla's FSD, it'd be chaos in the streets in SF, so it seems like it must be fairly infrequent.

thegrim33 2y ago
FWIW a quick google search turns up Waymo reporting they have 0.41 incidents with injuries per million miles driven [0], whereas Tesla vehicles using autopilot had 0.152 incidents with or without injuries, per million miles driven [1]. So Waymo has 2.7 times more incidents with injuries then Teslas using autopilot have incidents, with or without injuries. Maybe if I checked more sites they'd give different numbers, but from those initial numbers it seems your perception of reality of Waymo "screwing up" less is not accurate. [0] https://waymo.com/blog/2023/12/waymo-significantly-outperforms-comparable-human-benchmarks-over-7-million/#:~:text=When%20considering%20all%20locations%20together,2.78%20for%20the%20human%20benchmark https://waymo.com/blog/2023/12/waymo-significantly-outperfor...) [1] https://insideevs.com/news/720730/tesla-autopilot-crash-data-2024q1/#:~:text=The%20previous%20highest%20result%20was,miles%20driven%20per%20accident%20registered https://insideevs.com/news/720730/tesla-autopilot-crash-data....
- ra7 2y ago
  This is a ridiculous, apples-to-oranges comparison. You’re comparing fully driverless miles to driver assist miles with humans actively preventing accidents without controlling for any variables.
- TulliusCicero 2y ago
  This is an extraordinarily disingenuous comparison. A big reason why Tesla superfans have such a poor reputation is because of bad faith arguments like this that frequently pop up in these discussions. Tesla cars with FSD have a driver behind the wheel who can instantly take over if the car is about to crash into a stationary object. Any time a Tesla would've crashed into something an object but its human driver saved it, that doesn't count in stats like these. Many Tesla owners have reported that they have to regularly disengage FSD because it's trying to do something dangerous or looks like it's headed for a crash. In contrast, Waymo cars do not have a human who can take the wheel if they try to run into a wall. The closest equivalent is that if Waymo cars get confused and don't know how to proceed, they can stop, then phone home and ask a human navigator to give them 'advice' or a general path; these people don't directly control the car, they're more comparable to a human navigator in the front passenger seat. It's still human assistance obviously, but it's not gonna save the car from running into an object that it didn't think was there.
  - diebeforei485 2y ago
    > Many Tesla owners have reported that they have to regularly disengage FSD because it's trying to do something dangerous or looks like it's headed for a crash. With Tesla the responsibility is on the person in the driver's seat, so there is a (rightfully!) a bias for overreaction on the part of the driver. We will never know many of these disengagements were necessary. The only way to get a true comparison of data is to compare robotaxis with robotaxis.
    - TulliusCicero 2y ago
      It's true that not all of them would be crashes, but many would be, because, well, the car was about to crash. The car isn't just joking around when it swerves towards some parked cars. > The only way to get a true comparison of data is to compare robotaxis with robotaxis. 100% agreed. And so far, Tesla hasn't taken the step of actually letting the cars be driverless.
      - diebeforei485 2y ago
diebeforei485 2y ago
I'm not sure how true this is anymore. FSD has improved significantly this year that they're on their new NN architecture. It's worth remembering that Waymo required their users to sign NDA's during beta, while the Tesla FSD beta was open to everyone with no NDA. So there was a lot more Tesla content being posted and going viral.
- ra7 2y ago
  Waymo hasn’t required an NDA for at least a couple of years now. They only had a waitlist for access, you could share anything you want publicly.
  - diebeforei485 2y ago
    There were various stages of rollout. The earlier stages required an NDA, the later ones did not. Meanwhile Tesla hasn't required NDA's except for employees running internal builds.
    - ra7 2y ago
      Those NDAs ended a long time ago. Waymo has given close to 2 million rides since then. Everything’s out in the open.
      - diebeforei485 2y ago
        The NDA's ended when they were confident enough in their system that the good press would outweigh the bad. So essentially we're comparing footage from Waymo when it was at the end stages of its development to footage from Tesla at the early stages of its development.
        ra7 2y ago
        We agree that Waymo's and Tesla's development stages are wildly different at this point.

lambdaone 2y ago

Remember that the passenger cars are not the only thing that can scale; if you can automate the mapping and data preparation part of the process sufficiently, you may even be able to reduce it to mostly a matter of driving a few sensor cars around for a few weeks; maybe even cars that are adapted versions of your normal taxi vehicles, but with a human driver behind the wheel while you are mapping. I would imagine that while Waymo's mapping efforts have been very human effort-intensive so far, they will be looking at developing this automatic map-making capability as a high priority for rolling out new cities. Scaling the rate of expansion is then mostly a matter of throwing hardware and compute at the problem.

mike_hearn 2y ago

Tesla is willing to sell to people who will pay $$$ for a self driving car. Waymo isn't. That's probably more important for now. Taxi drivers don't earn that much, and have some advantages AI can't easily replace (able to help with luggage, use petrol stations etc). Replacing them requires undercutting them which in turn means you can't generate a ton of revenue from that. Yet Waymo's business model, such that it is, has put them many billions into the red already. I wonder if anyone has done some ROI calculations and if so how long it'd take. The LIDARs alone would require a huge number of trips just to pay them off, then you have the cars, the decade+ of enormously high software development salaries... if Waymo were another YouTube where it could hide amongst Google's other profitable businesses that'd be one thing. As a separate business with its own accountings, how long will it take until it's turned a profit?

threeseed 2y ago
> Tesla is willing to sell to people who will pay $$$ for a self driving car The very low take-up rate of FSD during the trial period indicates that most people are buying Tesla's because they are arguably the best EV with the best charging network. Not because of FSD.
- lanstin 2y ago
  Because the trial period showed that FSD will routinely try to kill you, on the routes I take around San Jose (interstate and normal roads). But having solar power and electric cars is awesome, and the car is a lot faster and more fun than my Prius was.