[93po]

i guess it depends on how you measure it.

1. how many miles does waymo drive compared to competition?

2. how many people use waymo versus competition?

3. how many miles of road does waymo work on?

the answer to all three is thousands of times less than Tesla's FSD, which granted is not free of disengagements and still supervised. But then you have to ask what consumers want:

1. self driving that needs intervention once every few hundred miles and works anywhere

2. self driving that works only in low volume and predictable traffic, in a small section of a single city, sometimes still gets stuck and blocks intersections, breaks as soon as the road conditions change, but is entirely hands off

i think most people want #1, and the usage stats agree with that

[filoleg]

Sure, but the major difference is that Waymo already operates a real service accessible to absolutely anyone in certain cities that actually transports passengers from point A to point B with no driver present in the car. Tesla FSD is not at that point yet.

I am not even saying this as some Tesla FSD hater, I used it a ton over the years and am generally happy with it. But claiming that, in its current state, it has a lead over Waymo is a bit questionable.

[93po]

waymo is using an approach that is inherently limited and not scalable. they went for short term gains at the expense of knee-capping themselves long term. it's a fundamentally less robust approach.

FSD is really, really close. The recent 12.5 software is a big step forward for them, and their rate of improvement is really, really fast these days.

i appreciate the level headed discussion

[filoleg]

Fair point about recent software updates, I can definitely believe that (I moved to a place where a car is not a necessity at the beginning of this year, so I didnt get to test the recent updates myself).

However, I can still see someone claiming that Waymo might have an edge in some form as a fair take, given they indeed have something that FSD, at the moment, doesn’t (which is full operation with no driver). Whether that is a viable long-term approach compared to FSD (or whether it is hitting the ceiling that FSD doesn’t have) is a solid point though.