[invisible]

I'm a fan of both approaches, but Waymo is very heavily reliant on Lidar (and uses CV for augmenting). They have been working on this problem for 12 years now and have just launched in Phoenix, using high definition maps, lidar, and a suite of other sensors. They have <1000 vehicles. Zero fatalities attributed to Waymo.

Tesla has been working on this problem for somewhere close to half the time and with far fewer resources initially. Tesla has a million cars on the road across the entire world and only use basic sensors and CV. Six fatalities have been attributed to Tesla (and the driver).

So there really isn't a lot of data to go on for who is "winning" but Tesla has much more driver data. The fatalities are so low compared to the miles driven that it's difficult to really know if Waymo could achieve a better result.

[sudosysgen]

Waymo is more reliant on lidar necessarily because lidar provides so much more data. You'd expect any algorithm to rely more on better data sources.

[invisible]

This isn't a counterargument, but sometimes more data isn't better data. I think lidar is super impressive in the right conditions, but debris in the air can be considered a bird even if it's a paper bag. If Waymo is having to still use CV to validate that it's a paper bag, then aren't they having to solve both problems? (Not that that is a bad thing, but it is at least two problems. I'm not certain who will achieve a working system, or if any of the players today will at all.)