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I agree with you on the moat side. Tesla is very late to this market. But, I would also argue that Waymo's moat isn't that wide either. Waymo is probably behind
by jillesvangurp 1y ago
I agree with you on the moat side. Tesla is very late to this market. But, I would also argue that Waymo's moat isn't that wide either. Waymo is probably behind their Chinese counterparts that are already operating at a larger scale. More rides. Larger cities. And more of them.
Waymo isn't the only player in the market and unlike Tesla and their Chinese competitors, they aren't really structured as a manufacturing operation. They are modifying consumer cars made by others, probably at great cost. That raises the question about how they are going to scale. Waymo is so far not a scalable operation. They can manage thousands of cars. But can they handle millions? Or make a profit.
Chinese manufacturers, like Tesla, have a ready answer to that by virtue of their proven manufacturing skills. And it seems they so far don't need Waymo's software to get their cars to drive themselves. Tesla is late. But they can build cars at scale. So, I'm not ready to claim they are too late yet.
I think Waymo might have a bright future ahead licensing their platform to manufacturers that are, so far, not showing many signs of having their own version of this.
As for whether this is technically possible or not, I think it's hard to argue that it's not from the back of a self driving taxi. I've not had that pleasure yet (none around near where I live) but I've seen enough to not be that foolish.
- jonstewart 1y agoI wonder how long a Chinese FSD car would last on the BWI parkway coping with Maryland drivers before it pulled over for a good cry.
- gcr 1y agoWho would you trust more: an FSD that’s learned to survive Xi’an rush hour and Wenzhou’s interpretive traffic balet, or one that’s learned to panic brake in Palo Alto? America doesn’t have a monopoly on challenging driving situations, y’know. :-)
- op00to 1y agoIs it still the case in China that it's cheaper to kill a pedestrian you hit with your car than it is to pay out damages? This might be propaganda! If so, I wonder if or how that affects the algorithms for pedestrian avoidance. :)
- gcr 1y agoLook, I’m trying to point out that it’s fairly likely Chinese engineers will craft their FSD systems with care comparable to American engineers making ours. The days of “China bad cheap low quality” stigma should broadly be left behind us.
- potato3732842 1y agoIt will last until it gets hit for doing something completely and totally legal but stupid, shortsighted and completely devoid of situational awareness or a functioning mental model regarding how drivers act.
- ChoGGi 1y agoIt's pretty scary driving in China, I've seen some interesting maneuvers.
- Zigurd 1y agoRemember 10 foot tall Ivan? Lots of people are thinking about the Chinese similarly. Waymo is probably not behind the Chinese. Huawei has the potential to make good AV software, but they're not caught up to Waymo yet. AV demos are easy. Scaling AVs is hard if you don't have mature technology. You need way too many remote supervisors to be able to scale, even in China where it's relatively cheap to hire humans to fill the gaps in your AI. I'm not arguing for complacency. The opposite really. But without realistic assessments, it's easy to get the impression that something is a lost cause or that protecting technologies doesn't matter.
- Alive-in-2025 1y agoThere's also no moat because zoox and waymo will compete and absorb /reduce any profit that Tesla finds if they ever deliver a working system. waymo has been scaling and has 250k paid rides a week. It's just not that expensive or hard to add sensors to an existing car and use a new platform. Byd and other Chinese automakers have similar fsd with lidar for $30k or less. It's certainly true that Tesla can crank out a lot more cars as their factory utilization goes down by the day. The millions of immigrants with low cost vehicles driving for Uber are also going to be hard to outcompete.