The Industry Is Laughing At Tesla
And rightfully so.
It’s fair to say that Tesla’s recent robotaxi unveiling was divisive at best. It had the glitz and spectacle expected of Elon these days but with not even a drop of substance. Even the AI robot bar tenders turned out to be fake animatronic puppets. It was incredibly entertaining to watch news outlets and the media at wide report on how crap the event was without enraging Musk’s cult of radicalised fanboys or risking a defamation lawsuit from the main homunculus himself, Musk. That being said, leaders in the self-driving industry are openly laughing in Tesla’s face, and for very good reason.
Arguably, Waymo is the current leader in the robotaxi race. It was the first to operate a robotaxi service without safety drivers and has now autonomously driven over 20 million miles on public roads. They are in a different league to Tesla. So, when they recently released a revised timeline of their expected progress, it wasn’t all that surprising to see they ranked Tesla at the bottom of their competition. They are openly stating that they don’t take Tesla seriously.
In fact, a former Wymo CEO has gone on record saying that Tesla isn’t serious about making a safe and accessible robotaxi service. Why? Well, like many critics (myself included), they point to Tesla’s lack of redundancy and limited sensor array. Since 2021, Tesla’s autonomous systems have only used a small array of cameras to understand the world around them. Compare that to every other autonomous company that uses vast suites of ultrasonic sensors, lidar and 4D radar on their self-driving cars. Some even run multiple AI-driving programs off these different sensors. This gives them redundancy if a sensor is compromised by the environment (like a camera failing to spot obstructions because the light is too harsh) or the AI makes a critical mistake, they can identify and mitigate the issue and continue to drive safely. Teslas, conversely, can’t, as they have a single AI and a single limited sensor suite, making them inherently unsafe.
That isn’t me saying this setup is unsafe. His engineers warned Musk that switching to just camera sensors would be dangerous. When he pushed the switch, they leaked to the media just how inherently dangerous Tesla’s system actually was. (read more here)
This was echoed by self-driving startup Zoox’s co-founder and CTO Jesse Levinson soon after Musk’s Robotaxi event. He stated that he simply doesn’t believe Tesla will launch a robotaxi ride-hailing service in California next year or anytime in the future, despite what Musk claims. He explained that the “fundamental issue is they don’t have technology that works, and by works, I want to differentiate between a driver assistance system that drives most of the time — except when it doesn’t, and then you have to take over — versus a system that’s so reliable and robust that you don’t need a person in it.” He went on to explain that Tesla’s appraoch of only using camera sensors falls short of the mark as “our perspective is you really do need significantly more hardware than Tesla is putting in their vehicles to build a robotaxi that is not just as safe, but as especially safer than a human.”
It isn’t like Levinson isn’t familiar with Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) system either. He explained that he uses Tesla’s FSD every now and then and called it “impressive.” But he also called it “stressful” as it usually “does the right thing, and then it sort of lulls you into this false sense of complacency, and then it does the wrong thing. You’re like, Oh, my God!”
He rounded off this conversation by saying that he believes Tesla’s FSD is “about 100 times less safe than a human if you look at all the metrics that are publicly available.” I completely agree. In fact, I did my own analysis and found that FSD has a mortality rate 10 times higher per mile driven using it (while still being supervised by a human) than the average American driver (who, on average, drives cars significantly less safely in a crash than Teslas).
Needless to say, Zoox, like Waymo, doesn’t really see Tesla as competition and instead laughs at Musk’s idiotic technology and goals. If you dig deep enough, you can find similar statements from leaders at other self-driving startups like Cruise or experts at automakers that take self-driving seriously, like Volvo, eluding to how Tesla has massively missed the mark.
But it’s easy to read between the lines. The industry at large is laughing at Tesla. They have been for some time now, and the Robotaxi announcement only made this chorus of ridicule more thunderous.
Maybe that is why Tesla’s head of AI left in 2022, and the only replacement Musk could get has only ever worked for Tesla and no one else. Musk had to recruit from inside his own bullshit echo chamber, as it seems no one outside, who would have greater experience, would take the job. It may also explain why Danial Ho, Tesla’s head of vehicle programs, who oversaw the development of the Model Y, Cybertruck and that stupid robotaxi concept, jumped ship soon before the robotaxi event and now works for Waymo.
You see, in reality, it isn’t just the industry laughing at Musk and Tesla; I suspect those within are also ridiculing the company’s moronic direction too. As such, executives and crucial talent are leaving in droves before it all implodes, leaving Musk and Tesla with only brain-washed yes men to do Musk’s inane bidding.
But doesn’t it feel like we have been here before? Legacy automakers and respected industry experts said similar things about Tesla’s initial EV push, claiming the technology wasn’t ready and that Musk’s plans made no sense. Yet, Tesla’s EV business is booming (albeit less than it was). So, Is this just the same Luddite nay-sayers all over again?
Well no. In truth, Tesla has always used already available EV technology; all they did was combine and lightly optimise it before the rest of the automotive industry started taking EVs seriously. These manufacturers and experts also had a significant vested interest in making Tesla fail, as it would protect their business model. Now, several years have passed, and the industry has started changing its business models, adopted this available new technology and has mostly caught up with Tesla.
This time around, the people criticising Tesla and Musk are trying to bring about the same technological change. They want self-driving cars to get past regulations and for the public to accept them. Pointing out Tesla’s immense failures here actually hurts them, as it slows both of these processes down. As such, their laughter isn’t that of an oppressive monopolistic industry trying to keep down the little upstart but of fellow revolutionaries desperately trying to ensure Musk doesn’t inadvertently derail their efforts.
Cause if he did, then we would have to use that other automated transport technology and not their self-driving cars. What is it called again? Oh yeah, trains.
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Sources: Tech Crunch, Business Insider, Forbes, Tech Crunch, CNN, Will Lockett