[827a]

Tesla, because they are the closest company to having a nation-sized fleet of autonomous taxis earning them some amount of revenue. Their autonomous driving system is roughly on-par with Waymo, but requires significantly less hardware, is already installed and running on millions of cars shipped since 2023 (HW gen4), and they have an established path to subsidizing the capex cost by selling these cars to consumers, then taking a percentage of self driving revenue (in addition to any centralized Waymo-like strategy they may concurrently run, like their pilot program in Austin). This is a wicked combination that has tons of stairstep potential lasting decades, as they work with regulators (well, whatever regulators are left) and expand the technology into other domains like semis.

In comparison: Waymo has awesome technology, but logistically, they open, like, a small subset of one new city every year. Tesla has the logistics; Waymo doesn't. And there's no third company in the west that's even close.

[karmakurtisaani]

You need to put a "Some people believe that" at the beginning of your message.

[827a]

You should always assume that everything you read on Hacker News is the opinion of the individual typing it, unless otherwise properly cited. That's your responsibility.

[karmakurtisaani]

Hey thanks for trying to convey an important lesson!

Let me rephrase the earlier with a bit more obvious snark: put "Elon Musk and I believe that.."

[zht]

Tesla’s FSD is on par with Waymo?

[827a]

I've done three 500 mile trips with it this year, and on one of these trips I challenged myself to never disengage, except when within just a few meters of the superchargers, home, or the destination. It did it. And the other two, I probably disengaged only a couple times on the other trips, mostly for stylistic reasons ("I wouldn't drive in the left lane here, that's a bit aggressive" kind of stuff). All in all I have ~6,000 FSD miles this year I'd estimate. Day-to-day, every once in a while if the lane markers are faded or something it might take the wrong lane across intersections, but its supremely good at making mistakes safely and recovering.

Its so good that its boring now. I show it to people and they're amazed for the first ten minutes, then they forget about it. "Wait, you weren't driving? That was the car?" It just works. I've literally fallen asleep, accidentally, for a very short time (it has attention monitoring, but its not good). There's an initial moment of panic when I woke up & realized that happened, but then I was like... why? That panic felt like a trauma relic my mind has held on to from driving other cars. In this car, there was zero risk. It was no different than the 500 mile zero-interaction journey I had done the month before. It doesn't need me in the drivers seat.

The only thing it struggles with is when there's debris on the road, or potholes. It'll usually just hit it. But even this is improving; yesterday I noticed a squirrel running across the road, and the car very subtly applied the brakes, before the squirrel cleared the other side, and the car continued at its normal speed. It was exactly what I would have done; maybe the squirrel doubles-back, so you need to prep your speed to be in a place where you can brake. It might have, if the squirrel had decided to do this. I have no doubt they will iron these problems out, because a year ago the list of "situations it struggles with" would have been this entire post.

But if you're not interacting with this technology every day, you have no idea. The future is here, its just not evenly distributed. But, these things have a way of happening slowly, then all at once.

[archagon]

Tesla has a fundamental leadership problem. Few CEOs spend so much time enthusiastically enraging and attacking their potential customer base. (Not to mention politicians, unions, etc.) I’ll be in the market for an electric vehicle soon but there is no fucking way I’m spending money on anything Musk-related ever again, and I’m hardly an abberation. It will be a massive albatross around the company’s neck until Musk is no longer associated with them.

On the other hand, nobody hates Waymo. In fact, people largely love Waymo. When it comes to consumer technology, this is a massive differentiator.