Americans have 1 day memories. Once the next news cycle starts most people move on.

That + Americans insane brand loyalty.

I don't think any meaningful comparison is possible here. The type of driving matters, you have to compare similar driving profiles. And in this case there are actually humans on board. So the real comparison would have to be how many accidents (with Tesla at fault) and how many safety driver interventions that otherwise would have likely resulted in an accident. And we don't have that information.

This really depends on the definition of a 'crash'. For example, fatal accident > insurance claim > minor incident.

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 works out to +/- an accident every 60,000 in a tesla robotaxi with a human operator.

i would calculate it that way to compare it to the last stat i had on waymo which was +/- an accident every 98,000 in an unattended vehicle.

comparing that to a human driver using stats from [0] the “AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety”

page down for maintenance, but summarized at [1]:

ages 16-17: crash every 69,000mi

ages 18-19: crash every 136,986mi

ages 20-29: crash every 182,149mi

ages 30-79: crash < every 303,030mi

ages 80: crash every 231,481mi

[0]: https://aaafoundation.org/rates-motor-vehicle-crashes-injuri...

[1]: https://www.friedmansimon.com/faqs/how-common-are-car-accide...

with that said: unattended vehicles are required to report every single incident no matter how minor or who is at fault. adults might just shrug off a minor contact and get on with their day without reporting or claiming it.

> 4 Crashes in a drive of 250k miles. How good/bad is this with human driving?

Most Austin human drivers don't crash 4 times in 250k miles.

It's a mistake to compare with the _average_ human driver.

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_.

And this is with a driver behind the wheel.

lidar was always going to be impossibly expensive for a consumer product.

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.

> due its reliance on LIDAR

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.

The cost for Waymo is the whole car, so Waymo is in it at ~$100k per operational taxi. They are beholden to hardware manufacturers for their product.

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).

> Waymo on the other hand have always been aiming to build a service business and that changes the model significantly

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.

The cost discussion on LIDAR always confused a layman like me. How much more expensive is it that it seemed like such a splurge? LIDAR seems to be the only thing that could make sense to me. The fact Tesla does it with only cameras (please correct me understanding if I'm wrong) never made sense to me. The benefits of LIDAR seem huge and I'd assume they'd just become more cost effective over time if the tech became more high in demand.

I'm _way_ out of my depth though.

Have they already solved the issue of LIDAR destroying CMOS cameras with its laser?

> lidar was always going to be impossibly expensive for a consumer product.

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-...

Tesla's strategy is bad. Build something that works first then optimize.

They optimized for cost first and may never get it to work.

That's what I've been saying for years.

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

> Why does it then follow that Tesla will never release a truly self driving car?

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).

There are serious concerns about Tesla even being around in a few years.

They have very large legal issues right now. Legal issues that are going to cost them tens of billions, depending on the legal proceedings.

Someone should have kept investing in Cruise for that. They were basically on par with Waymo, but then GM stopped the funding and shut Cruise down

What value does he bring to Tesla? or SpaceX? Or any of his other companies, for that matter?

Musk is gonna buy Alphabet? Fascinating.

Isn't the lesson from the success of TSLA, that you don't compete on price? That's what made Tesla the first successful EV. Because unlike the rest, they didn't try to compete on price and offer a mass market consumer vehicle. Instead they started with a roadster and then a luxury saloon both targeting the upper end of the market. I don't see the point of a budget taxi car. After all even the human driven counterparts tend to be higher end luxury saloons or SUVs.

Does that include the cost of a full-time chaperone?

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…

LIDAR, like other technologies, declines in cost over time, has done so substantially, and will continue to do so.

Tesla is just on the wrong side of that bet.

Calculate how much a car can drive (200-400k km), then the avg cost of a car (50k vs. 100k) and the avg taxi route (5-30km).

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.

> They are in completely different leagues

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.

Yeah but, it doesn't work good

> I've been asking for independent analysis for years now. The data is there

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.

The biggest clue is that Tesla still needs to have a human supervisor in the car. They aren't doing that for show, it's an active admission that the tech isn't there yet.

From this article, Tesla crashes 50% more often. But hard to compare when one has a human safety driver and the other does not.

> 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...

You just made me think of our PSA.

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 the key. The known instances I've seen are very minor taps / fender benders. Not great, but not fatal accidents

Accountability is a pretty big issue, I think. We've accepted, for better or worse, a certain level of human-caused crashes for 100 years or so. If machines take the wheel they have to be an order of magnitude (or more) better.

Can you expand on a "ton" of people? Best source I've found was this wikipedia article:

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.

No doubt, but his ability to deliver has totally faltered.

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.

The swindling?

The American fetish with locking cats indoors is extremely weird, and your neighbour sounds like a first class bellend (and the one who belongs in confinement, at best).

I believe they're referring to Uber here.

"Uber's self-driving operator charged over fatal crash" https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54175359

Please tell me which Waymos have been crashing into stationary objects.

At the very top of the article? Showing vandalism from 6 months ago rather than all the crazy Tesla news this week (like Elon's "$1tn" pay package, which is equally as spicy).

Again, at a certain point, it gets harder to defend as harmless with the visual of completely destroyed Teslas.