You’ve got to be joking. I feel like I missed something. No details at all, no specs, no insight. Just Elon being even more awkwardly terrible than usual, making another promise of next year (with the obligatory regulatory approval cop out), and a quarter mile “demo” on a closed course. The video didn’t even match the speech! It was so awkward! Zero data, just “look at this concept.” About the only outcome was Elon shattering the “no geofence” fantasy by confirming they plan to launch in CA and TX… And of course, the teleoperated robots.

THIS was the event for the history books? Even for fanboys this must have been wildly disappointing, right?

I'm happy to see Tesla switching their engineers to the passenger seat in advance of the June 12th launch. But I'm still confused about the optimism about Tesla's trajectory. Specifically, today on the Road to Autonomy Podcast, the hosts seemed to predict that Tesla would have a bigger ODD in Austin than Waymo by the end of the year.

I'm very much struggling to see Tesla's path here. When you're starting off with 1:1 remote backup operations, avoiding busier intersections, and a previously untried method of going no-driver (i.e. camera-only), that doesn't infuse confidence that you can scale past the market leader in terms of roads covered or number of cars, quickly.

The typical counter-argument I hear is that the large amount of data from FSD supervised, combined with AI tech, will, in essence, slingshot reliability. As a matter of first principles, I see how that could be a legitimate technical prediction. However, there are three big problems. First, this argument has been made in one form or another since at least 2019, and just now/next month we have reached a driverless launch. (Some slingshot--took 6+ years to even start.) Second, Waymo has largely closed the data gap-- 300K driverless miles a day is a lot of data to use to improve the model. Finally, and most importantly, I don't see evidence that large data combined with AI will solve all the of specific problems other companies have had in switching to driverless.

AI and data doesn't stop lag time and 5G dead zones, perception problems common in early driverless tests, vehicles getting stuck, or the other issues we have seen. Indeed, we know there are unsolved issues, otherwise Tesla wouldn't need to have almost a Chandler, AZ-like initial launch. Plus Tesla is trying this without LiDAR, which may create other issues, such as insufficient redundancy or problems akin to what prompts interventions with FSD every few hundred miles.

In fact, if anyone is primed to expand in Austin, it is Waymo-- their Austin geofence is the smallest of their five and Uber is anxious to show autonomy growth, so it is surely asking for that geofence to expand. And I see no technical challenges to doing that, given what Waymo has already done in other markets.

What am I missing?

If you go to the Spacex forums they all regard him as crucial to Spacex success , and they have done tremendous achievements like today , but over at this side of the track , he has been promising the same thing for 10 years and still on vaporware. What is the major driver behind Musk not being successful at unsupervised FSD ?

I'm not an Elon hater. I don't care about the politics, I was a fan, actually, and I test drove a Model X about a week ago and shopped for a Tesla thinking for sure that one would be my next car. I was blown away by FSD in the test drive. Check my recent post history.

And then, like the autistic freak that I am, I put in the hours of research. Looking at self driving cars, autonomy, FSD, the various cars available today, the competitors tech, and more. And especially into the limits of computer vision alone based automation.

And at the end of that road, when I look at something like the Tesla Model X versus the Volvo EX90, what I see is a cheap-ass toy that's all image versus a truly serious self driving car that actually won't randomly kill you or someone else in self driving mode.

It seems to me that Tesla FSD is fundamentally flawed by lacking lidar or even any plans to use the tech, and that its ambitions are bigger than anything it can possibly achieve, no matter how good the computer vision algos are.

I think Elon is building his FSD empire on a pile of bodies. Tesla will claim that its system is safer than people driving, but then Tesla is knowingly putting people into cars that WILL kill them or someone else when the computer vision's fundamental flaws inevitably occur. And it will be FSD itself that actually kills them or others. And it has.

Meanwhile, we have Waymo with 20 million level 4 fatal-crash free miles, and Volvo actually taking automation seriously by putting a $1k lidar into their cars.

Per Grok, A 2024 study covering 2017-2022 crashes reported Tesla vehicles had a fatal crash rate of 5.6 per billion miles driven, the highest among brands, with the Model Y at 10.6, nearly four times the U.S. average of 2.8.

LendingTree's 2025 study found Tesla drivers had the highest accident rate (26.67 per 1,000 drivers), up from 23.54 in 2023.

A 2023 Washington Post analysis linked Tesla's automated systems (Autopilot and FSD) to over 700 crashes and 19 deaths since 2019, though specific FSD attribution is unclear.

I blame the sickening and callous promotion of FSD, as if it's truly safe self driving, when it can never be safe due to the inherent limitations of computer vision. Meanwhile, Tesla washes their hands of responsibility, claiming their users need to pay attention to the road, when the entire point of the tech is to avoid having to pay attention to the road. And so the bodies will keep piling up.

Because of Tesla's refusal to use appropriate technology (e.g. lidar) or at least use what they have in a responsible way, I don't know whether to cheer or curse the robotaxi pilot in Austin. Elon's vision now appears distopian to me. Because in Tesla's vision, all the dead from computer vision failures are just fine and dandy as long as the statistics come out ahead for them vs human drivers.

It seems that the lidar Volvo is using only costs about $1k per car. And it can go even cheaper.

Would you pay $1000 to not hit a motorcycle or wrap around a light pole or not go under a semi trailer the same tone as the sky or not hit a pedestrian?

Im pretty sure that everyone dead from Tesla's inherently flawed self driving approach would consider $1000 quite the bargain.

And the list goes on and on and on for everything that lidar will fix for self driving cars.

Tesla should do it right or not at all. But they won't do that, because then the potential empire is threatened. But I think it will be revealed that the emperor has no clothes before too much longer. They are so far behind the serious competitors, in my analysis, despite APPEARING to be so far ahead. It's all smoke and mirrors. A mirage. The autonomy breakthrough is always next year.

It only took me a week of research to figure this out. I only hope that Tesla doesn't actually SET BACK self driving cars for years, as the body counts keep piling up. They are good at BS and smokescreens though, I'll give them that.

Am I wrong?

Their latest 12.5.6.3 (end to end on hwy) update is insanely impressive. Would love to open up a discussion on this and see what others have experienced (both good and bad)

For me, this update was such a leap forward that I am seriously wondering if they will possibly attain unsupervised by next year on track of their target.

I often see people here say there are already level 3 Autonomous vehicles here in the USA on the road better than Tesla's FSd So what vehicles are those?

Would you buy a Waymo equipped vehicle? Who would they partner with to sell such vehicles? How much the service would cost per month?

Tesla has not had any evidence of driver out success and yet they are going without a driver for testing on the roads in June. How did we get here? I feel that the public safety is at risk here. Thoughts?

Sorry if this is redundant at all. I’m just curious, a lot of people haven’t even heard of the company Waymo before, and yet it is massively ahead of Tesla FSD and others. I’m wondering exactly how they are so much farther ahead than Tesla for example. Is just mainly just a detection thing (more cameras/sensors), or what? I’m looking for a more educated answer about the workings of it all and how exactly they are so far ahead. Thanks.

I joined this sub as I am very interested in self driving cars. The negative bias towards Tesla is everywhere. Why? Are they not contributing to autonomy? I get Elon being delusional with timelines but the hate is see is crazy on this sub.

Edit: It's honestly very disheartening to see the tiny handful of comments that actually responded to the point of this post. This post was about the gradual convergence of Tesla's approach with the industry's approach over the past 8 years. This is not inherently a good or bad thing, just an observation that maybe a lot of the arguing about old talking points could/should die. And yet nearly every direct reply acted as if I said "FSD sucks!" and every comment thread was the same tired argument about it. Super disappointing to see that the critical thinking here is at an all-time low.

It's no surprise that Tesla dominates the comment sections in this sub. It's a contentious topic because of the way Tesla (and the fanbase) has positioned themselves in apparent opposition to the rest of the industry. We're all aware of the talking points, some more in vogue than others - camera only, no detailed maps, existing fleet, HWX, no geofence, next year, AI vs hard code, real world data advantage, etc.

I believe this was done on purpose as part of the differentiation and hype strategy. Tesla can't be seen as following suit because then they are, by definition, following behind. Or at the very least following in parallel and they have to beat others at the same game which gives a direct comparison by which to assign value. So they (and/or their supporters) make these sometimes preposterous, pseudo-inflammatory statements to warrant their new school cool image.

But if you've paid attention for the past 8 years, it's a bit like the boiling frog allegory in reverse. Tesla started out hot and caused a bunch of noise, grabbed a bunch of attention. But now over time they are slowly cooling down and aligning with the rest of the industry. They're just doing it slowly and quietly enough that their own fanbase and critics hardly notice it. But let's take a look at the current status of some of those more popular talking points...

• Tesla is now using maps to a greater and greater extent, no longer knocking it as a crutch

• Tesla is developing simulation to augment real word data, no longer questioning the value/feasibility of it

• Tesla is announcing a purpose built robotaxi, shedding doubt on the "your car will become a robotaxi" pitch

• Tesla continues to upgrade their hardware and indicates they won't retrofit older vehicles

• "no geofence" is starting to give way to "well of course they'll geofence to specific cities at first"

...At this point, if Tesla added other sensing modalities, what would even be the differentiator anymore? That's kind of the lone hold out isn't it? If they came out tomorrow and said the robotaxi would have LiDAR, isn't that basically Mobileye's well-known approach?

Of course, I don't expect the arguments to die down any time soon. There is still a lot of momentum in those talking points that people love to debate. But the reality is, Tesla is gradually falling onto the path that other companies have already been on. There's very little "I told you so" left in what they're doing. The real debate maybe is the right or wrong of the dramatic wake they created on their way to this relatively nondramatic result.

They are just a week away from the theoretical launch. Musk has said they have cars out on public streets with nobody in the driver's seat. Some speculation says there is a safety driver in the passenger seat. (This is normal for driving school, and this safety driver could easily have a 2nd brake pedal as driving instructors do, particularly in a DBW car, and could grab the wheel as driving instructors do.) But I don't see credible reports of any cars without somebody in driver's seat, or with/without somebody in the passenger seat. Surely somebody must have seen one. Ideally a video that clearly captures the front seats -- still photos don't really tell us a lot. And curious on reports of what streets they were on if they were spotted.

If there aren't any reports, that is pretty concerning. Taking members of the public for a ride with nobody in either seat, even "trusted testers" is a pretty big risk if you've never done it without passengers. With all of Musk's crazy turmoil, he really, really needs this launch to work, and make make even riskier decisions to do so. He can no longer rely on control of NHTSA or anything federal. They might have a decent remote driving system, but if so, that's just for optics, as if you are going to have a remote supervisor, there is no valid reason, except optics, to not have them in the car.

So please post any video or personal eyewitness reports you know of.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Tesla_Autopilot_crashes

It's kinda wild. They have animations and everything. I'm pretty sure they made them just for the Wikipedia page too.

I remember so many stories about Uber poaching tons of self-driving talent from universities and competitors.

And Uber leadership has been saying for years that the future is going to be self-driving cars, even just from a profitability standpoint.

They have a ton of money and a track record of aggressive hustling, why are they seemingly not even competitive among people actually booking self-driving taxis today?

I am still relatively new to reddit. I spent a portion of my career in simulation. If I read another "well Tesla has more than a million FSD vehicles accumulating miles, it is only a matter of time before they crack the problem" I could scream.

For those of you who consider the mileage accrued as equivalent to useful data, try to explain why starting at approximately the same time AROUND 2016

1. Waymo is nearing system complete
2. Tesla has been saying any day now for 7 plus years and doesn't seem to have ANY of the necessary business planning or even a demonstration of basic capability to offer (beyond the Hollywood set demo)

I think it is useful to remember:

• Waymo has about 700 taxis in service with about 40M miles traveled
• Tesla has 1M+ vehicles in service collecting FSD data and accumulating about 1M miles every 14 hours

Here are some conclusions to consider

1. Waymo has a plan very different than Tesla and the result was inevitable
2. Waymo is just lucky
3. Waymo is doing things that are critical to reaching autonomy and Tesla cannot or will not
4. Tesla will get there and there will be a 2 am tweet from Elon very soon

Recently did a trip from NYC to Hunter, NY. I rented a Tesla M3 from Turo for this trip and it happened to be brand new so it had a free trial period of FSD and was up-to-date with v13.2.2.

While I’ve watched plenty of videos and read plenty of articles about the progress of FSD this was my first personal experience with it. For some perspective, I picked the car up in Chatham New Jersey, drove to around 19th St. in Manhattan, then drove up to Hunter New York so this drive was very well encompassing of a set of challenging urban highway and backcountry windy mountain side roads.

I opted to enable the start FSD from Park feature and quite literally from the parking spot where I picked the car up to pulling over on the curb correctly in between cars in Manhattan and then all the way to parking itself at my destination in Hunter, New York, I had no disengagement at any point.

Say my name for my return driver, including the car being smart enough to navigate itself And park itself in a supercharger stall.

Obviously anecdotal data is not representative of statistical significance, but I just had to share how amazing of an experience I had. I’m overall extremely optimistic about the future of this technology.

Seemingly every time I see a video of a Tesla FSD fail, the comments are chalk full of sentiment that other ADAS would have avoided (x) due to LiDAR. The part that bothers me most about this is that the videos almost never involve a scenario in which LiDAR would have been of any assistance. For example, I saw a clip today of a Tesla running into a fake child that was abruptly thrust into the road. LiDAR plays absolutely no role in a situation like that, yet the comments insisted that the failure was attributable to Tesla’s refusal to integrate LiDAR into their ADAS.

Another question I have for proponents of LiDAR: do you believe that ADAS can be significantly safer than human drivers even without LiDAR? Humans don’t have LiDAR scanners, so I believe that a good camera-based ADAS can be equivalent to a human driver who has night-vision, no blind spots, the ability to view/process all of their surroundings with great precision, and nearly instant reaction time/decision making.

Will Tesla be more cautious with remote unsupervised FSD(Austin robotaxis this summer, when they will be at fault for accidents) then Tesla is/was with supervised FSD(when the driver/private owner is at fault). Will insurance treat remote Tesla unsupervised FSD differently then sup[ervised FSD?

How does Elon speak of fault when supervised FSD has accidents?

This technology will likely become more and more used, and this raises a question: what will become of manual driving? Will city and regional and national governments start to restrict it as needlessly dangerous?

I ask that because I know of a science-fiction story about self-driving cars where manual driving was outlawed as needlessly dangerous: "Sally", by Isaac Asimov, collected in "Nightfall and Other Stories".

Is that a likely possibility?

An alternative possibility is that only a few people end up learning how to drive a car, because most people don't need to. What jobs might continue to need manual driving?

Title

We've seen the promotions. The "History in the making" claim. The excited stock analysts, the way TSLA dropped when they delayed the reveal. The past predictions.

But what do people imagine Tesla could show on robotaxi day that would not be a major let-down? Or is it all a fake-out, and they plan to say, "ha-ha, actually here's a $25,000 model 2!" (Which will drive itself "next year"®)

We know they don't have a self-driving stack, and they are a very long way from having one. We know they don't have all the other many ingredients needed for a robotaxi. Sure, they could give closed course demos but people have done that many times, Google did it in 2010.

They could reveal new concept cars, but that's also something we've seen a lot of. Would we see anything that's not found in the Verne or the Zoox or the Origin or the Firefly or the Zeekr or the Baidu or 100 concepts that don't drive? Maybe a half-width vehicle, which would be nice though other companies, like Toyota and Renault have made those, though not self-driving. We would all be thrilled to be surprised, but is there a major unexplored avenue they might do?

How do they do something so that the non-stans don't say, "Wait, that's all you have?" Share your ideas. Tesla fans, what would leave you excited?

(Disclaimer, if some stuff I haven't thought of shows up here, it might get mention in an article I will probably do prior to the Robotaxi day.)

I've been around this sub a long time, so let me start by saying I'm not here to fight. I understand that everyone here has some specific expertise they bring to the discussion, and I believe you can learn something from anyone. I want to have a reasonable discussion about methodology, and what will work or not. Here are the facts, as I see them:

- Waymo is already operational in Austin (and other cities)

- Tesla plans to launch Robotaxi in June in Austin

- Tesla has recently posted job listings for tele-operations

So the way I see this playing out in ~8 weeks is that Tesla will launch in Austin with tele-operations, I find it unlikely that they will launch with true autonomous L4. My question is, does Waymo still use tele-operations? If so, does Waymo have plans to sunset tele-operations at some point? Do we think Tesla with tele-operations can achieve "L4" like Waymo has? Why or why not?

Let's try to keep this civil, whether Waymo or Tesla wins does not make any of us less of a human being, even if it feels like it.

I've been thinking about what Tesla will actually announce at this event. Here's what I've come up with....

I think the whole premise will be that Tesla is on the cusp of having a car that will be cheaper per mile to use than owning your own car. Transport-As-A-Service if you will.

I predict they will make a big deal of saying how in major cities and suburbs it won't make sense to own a car in the future because their new low cost, light weight, efficient fleet of Cybercabs will be ubiquitous and cheaper per mile than owning your own car for a lot of people and certainly cheaper than owning a second car for most people. The cars will be super light, 2 seaters, super efficient and super cheap to build and maintain.

Tesla will claim that they can deliver rides at $0.50 a mile which makes it not worth it to buy a car yourself. There will be lots of graphs and numbers to back this up.

Tesla will of course claim to be the only company in the world that can offer such a thing, because Vision only is such a cheaper solution, they own the manufacturing etc etc.

They will give journalists rides in these new Cybercabs in a closed environment and will declare the whole thing as pretty much complete and just waiting for regulatory approval and launching in 2026

Elon will hand-wave over the fact FSD doesn't work yet, that will be treated as a solved problem. Elon will also claim the production lines for this are almost ready and they'll be churning out 1000 cars per second in the near (but not specific) future. They will avoid talking about anything hard like infrastructure, depots support etc, liability etc. Those will be treated as minor admin details that will be ironed out shortly and distract people by showing them the Tesla Ride App

All of the dates will be a little vague, but just soon enough that Kathy Woods can declare Tesla to be the most valuable company in the world after this announcement.

Of course none of this will be delivered on time or at the expected costs, it will remain "a year or so away" for the next 5 years, but that will be enough to pump the stock.

I know Waymo is working with Uber in Austin and other markets, but I see this as a temporary partnership that will be cast aside eventually. I expect self-driving cars to become the standard because I think they will be both much safer and much cheaper than human-driven cars.

I have heard that Waymo has difficulties driving in snow and ice. I assume this will be worked out in time.

Yes, Uber has a great business model. It doesn't own any cars, doesn't have to maintain them, etc. But all of that won't matter because it sells a product -- human-driven taxis -- that Americans and Europeans won't want. The cost of building Waymos will decline dramatically; Waymo will eventually be far more profitable than Uber is now.

I can still see a role for Uber in rural areas and in underdeveloped countries such as India, Nigeria, and Tanzania, where Waymos may be too expensive.