Seriously though, Tesla has an extension history of irresponsibly selling "autopilot" which killed a ton of people. Because they don't take safety seriously. Waymo hasn't.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Tesla_Autopilot_crashe...
But I suspect it isn't comprehensive. It's hard to get good data on this for a variety of reasons.
> the report finds that Tesla Robotaxis crash approximately once every 62,500 miles. Waymo vehicles, which have been involved in 1,267 crashes since the service went live, crash approximately every 98,600 miles. And, again, Waymo does not have human safety monitors inside its vehicles, unlike Tesla's Robotaxis.
https://mashable.com/article/tesla-robotaxis-with-human-safe...
Everything is caused by human safety drivers making mistakes. It's never the AI.
There are many ways to "lie with statistics". Comparing all drivers - including those who are driving in weather self driving cars are not allowed to see - for example. there are many others and I want some deep analysis to know how they are doing and so far I've not seen it.
Independent analysis would be great, but Tesla has been very withholding and even deceptive with its data.
Compare to https://waymo.com/safety/impact where anyone can download the data.
Basically they are crashing at the same rate as 18-25 years old in the 90s, in France. When we could still drink like 3 glasses and drive.
Was it "un verre, ça va, deux verres, ça va, trois verres, bonjour les dégâts" ? Something like that.
Edit: looks like we didn't have "deux verres", maybe.
This is in the article right below a picture of the safety monitor in the passenger seat…
[1]https://electrek.co/2025/09/03/tesla-moves-robotaxi-safety-m...
Isn't it spicy enough to just report on the safety issues from Robotaxis?
Also:
> But several of the Austin crashes occurred while the vehicles were moving slowly or stationary, one incident involved contact with a fixed object in a parking area. Analysts say this suggests the system's perception and decision-making may not be giving monitors enough time to react, a key issue NHTSA has previously flagged in other FSD-related investigations.
Interesting for sure. This is also what some of the FSD influencers see when they test the limits (especially with parking with small obstacles).
At least two, to attestation of another person, was because an inattentive SUV hit the back of the car when it was making a left turn. People really want Tesla to not be good at self-driving.
https://old.reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingCars/comments/1ojjz5u/te...
None of these crashes occurred at higher than 8 MPH.
But yeah, let's not mention Waymo crashing into stationary objects and doing dangerous maneuvers such as cutting opposing traffic off during left turns or making turns from the middle lane despite having like 8x more sensors than Tesla does and pre-trained mapping
Waymos crash into each other: https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingCars/comments/1mdl5zn/tw...
Waymo cutting off bus at left turn: https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingCars/comments/1o9accg/wh...
Waymo doing... something... no clue how a pre-mapped car thinks this is ok: https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingCars/comments/1lmq7rl/wa...
Waymo sideswipes firetruck with its lights on: https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingCars/comments/1mj4w8d/wa...
---
Crashes happen. Tesla is currently having a rash of them but Waymo isn't immune to "wtf how" kinds of crashes even with all of its built-in advantages (far more sensors and having pre-mapping).
Again, at a certain point, it gets harder to defend as harmless with the visual of completely destroyed Teslas.
Keep in mind that if their choice of video annoys you to the extent that you complain about how horribly biased they are against Tesla, then mission accomplished as far as they're concerned. That's more people clicking the article and watching the video's preroll ad to see what you're talking about.
Personally, I'd be interested in how often the safety drivers had to intervene. But I assume we'll never get that information.
It also mentioned that Tesla hasn't registered for a permit in CA, which would require disclosing a lot more (like what you're asking for). Which is telling.
Companies have discovered that trust does not matter. People forget in one or two weeks or so. You can do very bad things and most people will still trust you in the long run. Especially if your offer is a few dollars cheaper than the competition.
The extra sad part is that this will make roads unsafer for informed people too.
That + Americans insane brand loyalty.
It's not just about fault.
Waymo has a well deserved reputation for vastly reducing the frequency and severity of accidents where it is at fault.
But if you look at the data for all crashes, regardless of fault, it's clear that Waymo also reduces the frequency and severity of crashes where other drivers are at fault.
Waymo's "we got hit by someone else" crashes are substantially lower per mil, probably on the order of 50% to 70% reduction, not just the crashes it causes.
A month or two back, I was driving down a steep one-way, three-lane street in SF, late on a rainy night. I saw a Waymo stopped at the left curb and I moved to the from the left lane to the center lane in case it started to pull out into the left lane. There were no cars in front of it or behind it, so I was shocked to see it quickly leave the curb at about a 45 degree angle, as if it were pulling out of a tight spot with a car parked just in front of it, but much faster. If I saw a human driver doing that, it would almost certainly mean they are trying to get all the way across the street immediately. If it was doing that, there is no way I could stop in time on the wet downhill. I tried, but that just made steering difficult as my anti-lock brakes struggled to find any traction at all. Then, just as quickly, it straightened out in the left lane. I'm glad I was the only other car around.
One element of defensive driving is thinking about how to avoid surprising other drivers. When will self-driving cars' defensive driving rise to that level? Waymo certainly wasn't there in that situation on that night.
Most Austin human drivers don't crash 4 times in 250k miles.
If we use insurance claim as the definition then: - The average driver files an insurance claim for a car crash about once every 17.9 years [1] - The average driver drives 13,476 miles per year [2] - This means one insurance claim per 241,220 miles driven by a human driver.
1. https://www.gtslawfirm.com/what-are-the-chances-of-getting-i... 2. https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/onh00/bar8.htm
It's reasonable to assume that a seasoned taxi driver will be _better_ than the average human driver. Many serious accidents happen because the driver was inebriated or drowsy/falling asleep, which shouldn't be the case with taxi drivers.
For a proper comparison, we should look at the crash record for _taxi drivers_, not the general population.
Furthermore, if I'm getting an Uber/Lyft I'm likely to choose drivers with a 5-star rating or close to it. That basically filters out all poor drivers. Which means that not only should we compare robo-taxis with taxi drivers, but with the _top rated taxi drivers_.
The reasoning, I think, was that humans can drive using sight and a little bit of sound, so an AI should be able to do this too.
Humans can do this because we have a very rich well-developed world model that allows us to fill in the gaps. We don't do it perfectly but we can do it decently well.
Modern AIs, or at least the ones small enough to be run on smaller machines that are economical to put in cars, don't have a rich world model like that. They're doing stimulus response backed by a database. That's going to break down at all kinds of edge cases.
The way to compensate for this is to give the car superhuman senses like LIDAR. The car is much dumber than a person but it can perceive its environment orders of magnitude better than a person, which compensates well enough that it has a chance of driving at least as well as a person.
If memory serves, a few years ago the official position, on a Karpathy presentation, was that if radar contradicted vision they would have to discard one, so they would stick to vision only.
I could never swallow that argument - seems obvious that a radar failsafe would keep you from making bad vision errors ...
I love FSD, I use it for 99% of my driving, and when it's working right it's an incredibly technology that overall makes my driving safer, but there's absolutely areas of weakness that every FSD user knows it cannot be trusted in under any circumstances and you must closely supervise and be ready to take over at any time.
HN: No one does R&D anymore. So sad.
Elon R&D: autopilot didn't work out, so everything Elon is involved in is a scam and never works.
Go ahead and dislike the guy, but nobody on the planet has his track record of success and think big.
And he's succeeded over and over and over and over again.
Frankly I don't know anyone as successful in modern times.
Note that his success does not mean I like him, or not. It is simple reality, data.
He also built himself as an ideologue, which has/will greatly impact the ability to attract and retain talent. At the end of the day, Elon is still relying on smart people to execute these projects.
Elon is looking a lot like the amazing artist who had a golden era of great works, and now is killing himself trying to fake his way back to his former self.
Ah yes, the old “crashed while stationary bug”. Hard to fix, that one.
Web sites hosting these clickbait articles have zero incentive to make things sound less dramatic.
An obvious tell is that they’ll use the word “crash” for a Tesla bumping a parking bollard.
"Uber's self-driving operator charged over fatal crash" https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54175359
johnthuss•3h ago
LurkandComment•3h ago
fluidcruft•3h ago
Octoth0rpe•2h ago
fluidcruft•2h ago
Pure anti-Capitalist nonsense. Companies fail. Let them die.
dylan604•2h ago
madamelic•2h ago
Argue with that as you like but Google _loves_ to sit around on good ideas and, in my opinion, hamstring them away from pushing their products to commercialization.
4kchiefofstaff•2h ago
The same with robots.
Before they sell it to some competitor, they will shelf it and will bet on nvidias autonomoes car platform.
drivingmenuts•2h ago
octocop•3h ago
dachworker•2h ago
LorenDB•2h ago
dachworker•2h ago
madamelic•2h ago
Companies like BYD and Tesla are positioned well for that if they can get their AV functionality proven out as both are fully integrated car manufacturers.
Waymo doesn't have in-house manufacturing and is, to my knowledge, purely software so they have lots of vendors along with a relatively low output of vehicles. Their 2025 and 2026 plan is to build 2,500 new cars per year. Each Waymo car currently costs over $100k. Even if Tesla was pushing out Model Ys as their robotaxi platform, they could flood the market very easily in both scale and price per mile _if_ UFSD (unsupervised FSD) was proven.
vel0city•2h ago
Most Americans don't seem to consider the cost of their transportation in the slightest.
Workaccount2•2h ago
Finacialization is what made $65,000 cars "cheap".
madamelic•2h ago
Of course there will be other factors like amenities.
Personally, I think 'style' is going to be a non-insignificant factor to it as well. Few normies will want to get out of a 'nerd car' that has bulbous sensors all over it if they can pay a bit more to have a cooler looking ride, it's the Prius effect.
The style thing is just my opinion though but price will be the major one. People will tolerate an ugly robotaxi if it is significantly cheaper or more convenient.
bryanlarsen•28m ago
xnx•2h ago
Have you considered that Americans might value their time differently than you? That might change your equation.
vel0city•28m ago
xnx•20m ago
4kchiefofstaff•2h ago
I think self driving will be a commodity in the long term and every car will be able to do it. If Tesla will solve it purly by cameras, every other car manufacturer will be able to add this too. Perhaps a few years later but they will be able to do it too.
So Tesla has to leverage the first mover advantage, and they are loosing this already.
And while Musk says robot taxis are fundamental to tesla, the taxi market is actually not that big. All the broad nice areas like small cities etc. will buy a small fleet of cars and i don't think the price point of a Tesla will that crazy much cheaper than whatever everyone else will have that it will be obvous for everyone to just buy the Tesla model.
I alone will not use Tesla alone for Musk. Despite that, people might want to pay a euro more to have a SVU to have space or higher entry point than choosing the cheapest Tesla model to drive with.
Tesla can't flood the market very easily. If they could, they would have done it. And its expected that Tesla will not suddenly find the solution to their problems. They are optimizing away the next 9 at the 9x% reliability. Every additional 9 will take the same amount as the previous 9. And the nines are quite relevant if you look how many km these cars will have to drive.
tverbeure•2h ago
That aside, the cost of a Waymo is estimated to be between $150 and $200k. A model 3 based Tesla robotaxi doesn’t cost less than $20k…
gibolt•2h ago
Workaccount2•2h ago
tverbeure•2h ago
don_neufeld•2h ago
Tesla is just on the wrong side of that bet.
4kchiefofstaff•2h ago
The car itself is a price point of 10 to 40 cent pro km which has impact on the journey for sure but a lot less that it might be the reason.
if you tell me, that i can take the saver car and pay 1 euro more with a 20 euro fair, I wouldn't care.
Nonetheless, economy of scale has happened already at lidar and continues to happen.
If tesla can't get it running properly in bad weather but waymo can, they can also compensate it just by driving at situations were tesla doesn't want to drive.
But hey its just brainstorming at this point as tesla is not close enough to waymo to compare it properly. And while waymo exists, plenty of other companies exist too doing this. Nvidia itself will keep building their car platform which will level the playfield even more.
Whatever market selfdriving cars are, it will be split between everyone and no tesla will not just 'win' this. It will be a race to the bottom for everyone reducing the revenue to a commodity.
4b11b4•2h ago
xnx•2h ago
Agreed. Waymo has a working self-driving vehicle that currently operates in many cities. Tesla has a buggy tech demo in a portion of Austin.
> the Tesla robotaxi vehicle is probably cost 10x less, at least.
Very unlikely. Waymo vehicles also carry twice as many people.
samwillis•2h ago
Tesla have been operating as a product business, and cost reduction of that product was key to scale and profitability. I completely understand why they have focused on optical sensors for autopilot, lidar was always going to be impossibly expensive for a consumer product.
Waymo on the other hand have always been aiming to build a service business and that changes the model significantly, they need to get to market and gain operational experience. Doing that with more expensive equipment to move faster is exactly what was needed. They can worry about cost of building their cars later, much later.
2OEH8eoCRo0•2h ago
They optimized for cost first and may never get it to work.
consumer451•2h ago
xnx•2h ago
A normal approach is:
1) Make it work
2) Make it right(/safe)
3) Make it fast/cheap
consumer451•1h ago
Is there some technological thing about LiDAR that would prevent similar cost reductions? Or, is it just the philosophical difference over pre-mapping, and not doing so?
xnx•1h ago
> Or, is it just the philosophical difference over pre-mapping, and not doing so?
It seems to be a "burn the ships" style bet that the Tesla engineers will get to camera-only self driving first without having ever relied on LIDAR. It's equally as likely (or moreso) that Waymo could get there first with better ground truth data from the LIDAR.
unglaublich•2h ago
jjice•2h ago
I'm _way_ out of my depth though.
robotresearcher•2h ago
You’re sending your own illumination energy into the environment. This has to be large enough that you can detect the small fraction of it that is reflected back at your sensor, while not being hazardous to anything it hits, notably eyeballs, but also other lidar sensors and cameras around you. To see far down the road, you have to put out quite a lot of energy.
Also, lidar data is not magic: it has its own issues and techniques to master. Since you need vision as well, you have at least two long range sensor technologies to get your head around. Plus the very real issue of how to handle their apparent disagreements.
The evidence from human drivers is that you don’t absolutely need an active illumination sensor to be as good as a human.
The decision to skip LiDAR is based on managing complexity as well as cost, both of which could reduce risk getting to market.
That’s the argument. I don’t know who is right. Waymo has fielded taxis, while Tesla is driving more but easier autonomous miles.
The acid test: I don’t use the partial autonomy in my Tesla today.
senordevnyc•12m ago
madamelic•2h ago
LiDARs at the time Tesla decided against them were $75k per unit. Currently they are $9,300 per car with some promising innovations around solid state LiDAR which could push per-unit down to hundreds of dollars.
Tesla went consumer first so at the time, a car would've likely cost $200k+ so it makes sense why they didn't integrate it. I believe their idea was to kick off a flywheel effect on training data.
bbarnett•2h ago
Everything is expensive without scale. But lidar will be very cost effective, when scaled to millions upon millions of cars annually.
And with scale, there are reasons to optimise, reduce cost, etc. Large volumes of sales draws more research. Research to reduce cost.
Self driving is a long game. Decades.
samwillis•2h ago
ifwinterco•2h ago
xnx•2h ago
To each their own, but it's possible having sensor bumps on your car become a status symbol that indicates you can afford a private driver.
> not sure you can have it on a convertible etc.
Radically different car shapes are possible when human driving never happens or is very rare. Maybe a small van (like a private lounge on wheels, or a train observation car) with a huge panoramic sunroof becomes en vogue.
orwin•1h ago
Lidar production costs have already scaled. Now it need more miniaturization (which will help with production costs even more) and something against diffraction.
thiago_fm•2h ago
Waymo can just add the cameras exactly the way Tesla has, and train based only on that information.
Now it has tons and tons of data, they could gradually remove the Lidar on cities that they've driven over and over again. IF driving without Lidar is worth it... maybe it isn't even worth it and we should pursue using Lidars in order to further reduce accidents.
Meanwhile people use Tesla sporadically in a few spots they consider safe, they will always have data that isn't useful at all, as it can already drive on those spots.
--
Another thing, we can definitely afford to have Lidars on every car, if that would make our cars safer.
Imagine if China does a huge supply chain of Lidars, I bet the cost would be very tiny. And this is supposing there aren't any more automation and productivity gains in the future, which is very unlikely.
Lidar production just doesn't have that big scale, because it's a very tiny market as of now. With scale, those prices would fall like batteries and other hardware have fallen with the years.
TLDR: Tesla lost badly
vardump•2h ago
philipallstar•2h ago
This isn't the main factor. The main factor is Waymo only does this one thing. Tesla has been: building electric cars and forcing all car makers to do the same; building charging networks; funding and releasing free of charge battery tech research improvements; and doing self driving, and all of it while trying to make a profit to keep running. Waymo is funded by Google, which has infinitely deep ads-spying-on-you pockets. Which is just much, much easier.
xnx•2h ago
Building a self-driving car is more difficult as evidenced by no one having delivered one except for Google. Many companies (including astronomically rich ones like Apple) have tried.
Workaccount2•2h ago
Tesla is trying to get in at ~$20k per operational taxi, with everything made in house.
Assuming Tesla can figure out it's FSD (and convince people it's safe), they could dramatically undercut Waymo on price, while still being profitable. If a Waymo to the airport is $20, and Robotaxi is $5, Tesla will win, regardless of anything else (assuming equal safety).
xethos•1h ago
seanhunter•2h ago
I just don't buy this at all
>"The new iPad Pro adds ... a breakthrough LiDAR Scanner that delivers cutting-edge depth-sensing capabilities, opening up more pro workflows and supporting pro photo and video apps." [1]
Yes of course the specs of LiDAR on a car are higher but if apple are putting it on iPads I just don't buy the theory that an affordable car-spec LiDAR is totally out of the realm of the possible. One of the things istr Elon Musk saying is that one of the reasons they got rid of the LiDAR is the problem of sensor fusion - what do you do when the LiDAR says one thing and the vision says something different.
[1] https://www.apple.com/uk/newsroom/2020/03/apple-unveils-new-...
robotresearcher•2h ago
Higher specs can make all the difference. A model rocket engine vs Space Shuttle main engine, for an extreme example. Or a pistol round vs an anti-armor tank round. The cost of the former says nothing at all about the latter.
seanhunter•1h ago
https://www.volvocars.com/uk/support/car/ex90/article/47d2c9...
hnburnsy•1h ago
robotresearcher•1h ago
From your linked page:
> Important Use responsibly
The lidar and features that can rely on it are supplements to safe driving practices. They do not reduce or replace the need for the driver to stay attentive and focused on driving safely.
Safe for the eyes
The lidar is not harmful to the eyes.
Lidar light waves can damage external cameras
Do not point a camera directly at the lidar. The lidar, being a laser based system, uses infrared light waves that may cause damage to certain camera devices. This can include smartphones or phones equipped with a camera.
Veedrac•1h ago
xnx•2h ago
Due to its choice to use LIDAR. Waymo has tested a working system using cameras only, but they choose to use LIDAR because it is safer and does not significantly change cost.
> Waymo on the other hand have always been aiming to build a service business
Waymo's roadmap (from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXLgzP3gv2k):
1) Ride hailing 2) Local delivery 3) Long haul trucking 4) Personally owned cars
Is step 4 still considered a service? It will almost certainly require a subscription.
testing22321•2h ago
Why does it then follow that Tesla will never release a truly self driving car? That makes no sense.
Is it somehow impossible for an achievement to be reached by more than one person/company?
Of course not. The hyperbole is not needed, and does nothing but remove credibility from your statement
xnx•2h ago
Never is a long time, but it's possible that Tesla adopts LIDAR before it gets camera-only to work.
There are all kind of historical technological dead-end examples (e.g. planes that flap their wings).
testing22321•1h ago
Ummmm yes. That is the definition of doing something difficult.
xoa•1h ago
There's nothing wrong with that in a vacuum, but it's objectively a different story when the company chooses to turn it into an enormous financial liability. That is a massive practical difference, with extremely pertinent example being Tesla vs SpaceX. SpaceX has had enormous success running a hardware rich testing regime, and they're very willing to move fast and break things... but NEVER with customer payloads. Which is how that aphorism was supposed to be applied. You can and often should be extremely aggressive exploring the entire problem space in testing before you move into final build and then production, but once you're dealing with customers then it has to be done very differently.
Tesla absolutely could have experimented to their heart's desire without making any financial promises let alone actually entering into end customer contracts and taking hundreds of millions of dollars in preorder money for a future feature on ass-pulled timelines. But that's not the path they took, and that leaves them in a much uglier position when it comes to reacting to data and changing their approach because they've already locked in hardware to paying customers. That's the exact opposite of what SpaceX or any normal responsible company does.
chneu•1h ago
They have very large legal issues right now. Legal issues that are going to cost them tens of billions, depending on the legal proceedings.