They’re solving different problems. Waymo works in only some areas and requires all sorts of hardware. Tesla FSD is trying to do something more generalized.
No, but I don’t think its clear that Tesla deserves its valuation at its current rate. They aren’t demonstrating any competitive advantage or particular skill in the space vs Waymo
Comma is phenomenal at highway driving. Better than Tesla.
They should keep on doing what they're doing. Make ~$1000 gadget that makes driving less of a chore. Doubtful they'll get to driverless in next 10 years.
There can be many players in the market at different offerings and price points. Comma is a sweet spot where they are handsomely profitable, don't need to raise another round and get incrementally better.
Waymo has unlimited money from Google. Cruise, Zoox, e.t.c will have to face reckoning at some point.
It was smart of Uber to get out of self-driving car billion dollar money burning pit. They can always enter the race again. They have market size advantage.
Waymo has been doing public rides (2015) since before either company was founded (2016). Pony.ai also got their permit suspended twice in California for different safety-related reasons, so the comparison says more about the different regulatory environment in China than it does about their relative maturity.
Yeah. Have you seen Waymo? Even with 12.5, you have to keep your eyes on the road, and at least once or twice a week, it’s going to do something that would likely cause an accident. If it does, Tesla will blame you for not paying attention.
In a Waymo, you sit in the back seat and scroll your phone and it gets you safely to your destination every time. These are not even remotely comparable products.
He obviously hasn't. The tech community is in for quite a shock with Tesla robotaxi's come out in a year or so and blow out the competition. One factor not discussed often is how much smoother FSD is compared to all other self driving. Especially noticeable when going from FSD to the free AutoSteer or GM Supercruise.
My Ubers often smell very strongly of the food the driver has been eating.
The driver is often on a call for the entire journey, which is annoying.
It’s often much colder or warmer than I’d ideally like.
An extreme case, but I once had a driver stop a ride, jump out of the car and pull the driver out of the car in front. They proceeded to have a fist fight. The other guy had honked at him for blocking the road or something.
Haven’t jaguars always been a mixed bag? Kind of low quality luxury, so I can imagine them getting some kind of deal. The irony is that jaguar used to be know for its really bad electrical wiring back in the 70s.
Freeways are much, much less forgiving of abrupt speed changes and braking, which is something waymo (used to) have quite an issue with. Moving to freeways shows they are confident that won't be an ongoing issue.
Yes I was driving on a freeway last week and traffic went from 80mph to dead stop about as fast as I could stand on the brakes. I didn't hit the car in front of me with only a few feet to spare, and fortunately the driver behind me was also paying attention. The jam eventually cleared, and there was absolutely no indication of what caused it.
Emergency braking is much harder at freeway speeds.
At 35mph you can have something (radar/cameras) look a few meters ahead, then if there is a stationary obstacle you slam on the brakes.
At 60 that doesn’t work because braking distances are much longer. There might be an obstacle directly ahead of you on the pavement, but you won’t hit it because the car will turn with the road. This means that your emergency braking system needs to be aware of the steering, the road layout, and the expected route.
Whenever I drive on highways in heavy rain I wonder how a self-driving car would behave. Virtually all human drivers drive unsafely in these conditions by following too closely. Would a Waymo keep the distance? Seems difficult to do in heavy traffic. The alternative I guess is to drive very slowly.
I thought this as well, but I think it emerged in an Waymo interview that any weird thing that can happen on city street can also happen on a freeway and the reaction time is lower and the consequences higher on a freeway.
Freeways have some of the same challenges as streets, but not all of them. Treating the environment as if anything can happen at any time is just an "abundance of caution" thing. To use a real example, you don't get people walking up and throwing an egg at the side of your vehicle on controlled access freeways.
Waymos are one of the first things that my visitors to SF want to try. It feels like living in a science-fiction future.
The ride and navigation feels very smooth - after the novelty of having no driver in the front seat wears off, you become accustomed to the experience surprisingly quickly. In comparison, I found the Cruise driving experience pretty uncomfortable and stress-inducing.
The app and software inside the vehicle is really well-designed. Which is unusual for a google consumer product!
And my female friends, in particular, far prefer Waymo to Uber or Lyft because they don’t have to engage with a creepy driver trying to hit on them.
I, for one, welcome our new self-driving overlords.
Maybe it is the traffic that is wrong? Vehicle-induced injury and death is still a huge issue, and marginal speed increases make no difference to overall trip times.
One of the best things about Waymo vs Uber and Lyft is that they drive smooth and comfortable, they aren’t zooming around between every stoplight and making me carsick.
I wish they would test going back to point-to-point pick-ups and drop-offs. I can easily see reasons to move to a designated pick-up and drop-off location model, but I feel it weakens the value proposition for people with mobility issues if they have to walk a few blocks.
I don't think that's up to Waymo, it's a legal thing mostly. The city has to allow that.
The funny thing about self-driving cars is that they're designed to obey laws to the letter, which real drivers never do. I think we're going to see a lot of laws necessarily getting updated to allow real-life driving behavior, such as double-parking during pickup and dropoff.
> I don't think that's up to Waymo, it's a legal thing mostly. The city has to allow that.
Did the SFPUC make a change to disallow that then, because point-to-point is how Waymo worked in SF as recently as a month or so ago? Perhaps they did, as a condition of allowing expansion.
I'm happy for Waymo and hope they continue to expand. I do expect Tesla to still win out on "robotaxis" in the nearish term, e.g. I expect them to have given way way more rides than Waymo by say 2030
Tesla has yet to demonstrate autonomous driving capability. A human ready to intervene in long tail scenarios (which is the hard part of the problem) does not constitute autonomous capability, no matter what the marketing material says.
> Tesla has yet to demonstrate autonomous driving capability
I'm betting on Waymo, too, but Tesla has chutzpah in a way Google and GM do not. That might permit them to take more risks (and incur more costs on the public) earlier.
they have demonstrated autonomous driving capability. the main difference between them and Waymo is miles per intervention, of which Tesla is about 10x behind where Waymo was when they started giving rides. but soon they will be equal and Tesla will have millions more cars and built out service centers ready to activate
Readit News
Waymo doesn’t exist here.
They should keep on doing what they're doing. Make ~$1000 gadget that makes driving less of a chore. Doubtful they'll get to driverless in next 10 years.
There can be many players in the market at different offerings and price points. Comma is a sweet spot where they are handsomely profitable, don't need to raise another round and get incrementally better.
Waymo has unlimited money from Google. Cruise, Zoox, e.t.c will have to face reckoning at some point.
It was smart of Uber to get out of self-driving car billion dollar money burning pit. They can always enter the race again. They have market size advantage.
In a Waymo, you sit in the back seat and scroll your phone and it gets you safely to your destination every time. These are not even remotely comparable products.
I routinely have as little interaction with the driver as I want
The driver is often on a call for the entire journey, which is annoying.
It’s often much colder or warmer than I’d ideally like.
An extreme case, but I once had a driver stop a ride, jump out of the car and pull the driver out of the car in front. They proceeded to have a fist fight. The other guy had honked at him for blocking the road or something.
I’d much prefer a computer to drive me around.
2.) The vehicles are standardized, comfortable and clean
3.) You can play your own music or none at all, roll down the windows or leave them up, while an Uber driver's preferences might not match your own
At 35mph you can have something (radar/cameras) look a few meters ahead, then if there is a stationary obstacle you slam on the brakes.
At 60 that doesn’t work because braking distances are much longer. There might be an obstacle directly ahead of you on the pavement, but you won’t hit it because the car will turn with the road. This means that your emergency braking system needs to be aware of the steering, the road layout, and the expected route.
Waymos are one of the first things that my visitors to SF want to try. It feels like living in a science-fiction future.
The ride and navigation feels very smooth - after the novelty of having no driver in the front seat wears off, you become accustomed to the experience surprisingly quickly. In comparison, I found the Cruise driving experience pretty uncomfortable and stress-inducing.
The app and software inside the vehicle is really well-designed. Which is unusual for a google consumer product!
And my female friends, in particular, far prefer Waymo to Uber or Lyft because they don’t have to engage with a creepy driver trying to hit on them.
I, for one, welcome our new self-driving overlords.
AFAIK, they strictly follow the speed limit, which feels too slow when everyone else is speeding.
The funny thing about self-driving cars is that they're designed to obey laws to the letter, which real drivers never do. I think we're going to see a lot of laws necessarily getting updated to allow real-life driving behavior, such as double-parking during pickup and dropoff.
Did the SFPUC make a change to disallow that then, because point-to-point is how Waymo worked in SF as recently as a month or so ago? Perhaps they did, as a condition of allowing expansion.
I'm betting on Waymo, too, but Tesla has chutzpah in a way Google and GM do not. That might permit them to take more risks (and incur more costs on the public) earlier.
In the end, avoiding a monopoly is always good.