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I honestly thought Tesla would beat everyone to the punch here but it seems like they just stalled out what - five or so years ago? Waymo seems to be the furth

I honestly thought Tesla would beat everyone to the punch here but it seems like they just stalled out what - five or so years ago? Waymo seems to be the furthest ahead in my complete outsider opinion. I feel like everyone else is a way distant second.

CamperBob2 1y ago
It's hard to attract and retain key talent when the CEO is going around acting all Nazi-curious. Good people who can leave are likely to do so.
- aetherson 1y ago
  That may be true, but Tesla stalled out a long time before Musk's rightward turn.
- baq 1y ago
  Nazi-curious is just a state of substance-curious in this case IMHO
  - throwaway314155 1y ago
    Oh well in that case it's totally excusable /s
    - baq 1y ago
      Oh no you misunderstood. He’s been insufferable for many years before this.
  - rsynnott 1y ago
    I mean, lots of people are drug addicts without being complete arseholes. Not an excuse.
tcoff91 1y ago
Their decision to entirely rely on computer vision seems unwise
- trainsarebetter 1y ago
  Short term, perhaps, long term they might end up with a more generalized robot operating system. It’s definitely more flexible
  - gonzo41 1y ago
    Seems like a mistake not to be a sensor maximalist. Why not try and get as many data streams onboard as possible. Seems like the generalized robot OS would be better if it was a data fusion platform.
    - trainsarebetter 1y ago
      That’s a good point. I coming from the perspective that waymo is more of a “dead reckoning” approach compared to Tesla long(and maybe never ending) road.
- smallmancontrov 1y ago
  Their decision to rely on vision got them billions of miles of training data from every corner of the USA. It did not get them point clouds, but monocular depth estimation works extremely well these days, so would it really have been that valuable? It looks to me like they made a shrewd bet and won big.
  - seanmcdirmid 1y ago
    They didn’t count on LIDAR falling in price so rapidly with their bet.
    - smallmancontrov 1y ago
      The cameras that collected those billions of miles of data were installed up to 10 years ago. You can't teleport today's LIDAR prices into the past.
jfoster 1y ago
You might not have heard of the biggest one. Apollo Go in China is actually slightly ahead of Waymo in terms of vehicles and miles. Assuming the Austin robotaxi service continues to go smoothly, I expect Tesla will leapfrog both of them in the next 12 months. Tesla's cost-effective approach (cameras) combined with the fact that they have already scaled vehicle production positions them really well. Media (and therefore people who trust it too much) will point out places where each of the services goes wrong, but the reality is that likely all of them are already much safer than human drivers if you define "safety" in terms of severe accidents per million miles. More than a million people die each year from automobile accidents with humans behind the wheel.
- archagon 1y ago
  Yeah, but Tesla is headed by a ketamine-addicted imbecile. Will sound engineering prevail over brain rot in the C-suite? I am skeptical.
  - drivingmenuts 1y ago
    I hope he gets shut down so hard he winds up living in a box in an alley. He's a billionaire Neo-Nazi.
- dns_snek 1y ago
  > the reality is that likely all of them are already much safer than human drivers if you define "safety" in terms of severe accidents per million miles. There's no chance this includes Tesla with their disengagements (equivalent to the driver passing out) and even then it's only true under the restricted set of conditions these systems actually operate at compared to human drivers.
  - jfoster 1y ago
    It wouldn't make sense for the robotaxis to ever disengage in the same way that you might've seen in FSD videos. I'm guessing that they just stop if they ever encounter a situation where they don't know what to do.
MetaWhirledPeas 1y ago
> Waymo seems to be the furthest ahead in my complete outsider opinion. There's a high floor to Waymo's costs though, and therefore a lower ceiling to their profits. Tesla's aim was always to make it (way) more scalable. If they can match Waymo's performance at Tesla's costs, Waymo goes the way of the dodo pretty quick.

CamperBob2 1y ago

It's hard to attract and retain key talent when the CEO is going around acting all Nazi-curious. Good people who can leave are likely to do so.

aetherson 1y ago
That may be true, but Tesla stalled out a long time before Musk's rightward turn.
baq 1y ago
Nazi-curious is just a state of substance-curious in this case IMHO
- throwaway314155 1y ago
  Oh well in that case it's totally excusable /s
  - baq 1y ago
    Oh no you misunderstood. He’s been insufferable for many years before this.
- rsynnott 1y ago
  I mean, lots of people are drug addicts without being complete arseholes. Not an excuse.

tcoff91 1y ago

Their decision to entirely rely on computer vision seems unwise

trainsarebetter 1y ago
Short term, perhaps, long term they might end up with a more generalized robot operating system. It’s definitely more flexible
- gonzo41 1y ago
  Seems like a mistake not to be a sensor maximalist. Why not try and get as many data streams onboard as possible. Seems like the generalized robot OS would be better if it was a data fusion platform.
  - trainsarebetter 1y ago
    That’s a good point. I coming from the perspective that waymo is more of a “dead reckoning” approach compared to Tesla long(and maybe never ending) road.
smallmancontrov 1y ago
Their decision to rely on vision got them billions of miles of training data from every corner of the USA. It did not get them point clouds, but monocular depth estimation works extremely well these days, so would it really have been that valuable? It looks to me like they made a shrewd bet and won big.
- seanmcdirmid 1y ago
  They didn’t count on LIDAR falling in price so rapidly with their bet.
  - smallmancontrov 1y ago
    The cameras that collected those billions of miles of data were installed up to 10 years ago. You can't teleport today's LIDAR prices into the past.

jfoster 1y ago

You might not have heard of the biggest one. Apollo Go in China is actually slightly ahead of Waymo in terms of vehicles and miles. Assuming the Austin robotaxi service continues to go smoothly, I expect Tesla will leapfrog both of them in the next 12 months. Tesla's cost-effective approach (cameras) combined with the fact that they have already scaled vehicle production positions them really well. Media (and therefore people who trust it too much) will point out places where each of the services goes wrong, but the reality is that likely all of them are already much safer than human drivers if you define "safety" in terms of severe accidents per million miles. More than a million people die each year from automobile accidents with humans behind the wheel.

archagon 1y ago
Yeah, but Tesla is headed by a ketamine-addicted imbecile. Will sound engineering prevail over brain rot in the C-suite? I am skeptical.
- drivingmenuts 1y ago
  I hope he gets shut down so hard he winds up living in a box in an alley. He's a billionaire Neo-Nazi.
dns_snek 1y ago
> the reality is that likely all of them are already much safer than human drivers if you define "safety" in terms of severe accidents per million miles. There's no chance this includes Tesla with their disengagements (equivalent to the driver passing out) and even then it's only true under the restricted set of conditions these systems actually operate at compared to human drivers.
- jfoster 1y ago
  It wouldn't make sense for the robotaxis to ever disengage in the same way that you might've seen in FSD videos. I'm guessing that they just stop if they ever encounter a situation where they don't know what to do.

MetaWhirledPeas 1y ago

> Waymo seems to be the furthest ahead in my complete outsider opinion. There's a high floor to Waymo's costs though, and therefore a lower ceiling to their profits. Tesla's aim was always to make it (way) more scalable. If they can match Waymo's performance at Tesla's costs, Waymo goes the way of the dodo pretty quick.