We’ve seen this before. Tesla does something new. The competition decries that this will never happen. The Model 3 will never come. The Model Y is vaporware. Gigafactory 3 is a mud field. The newest FUD comes from Waymo CEO John Krafcik, who said that Tesla’s “full self-driving” system isn’t the right approach toward a fully autonomous vehicle.
Waymo CEO Tosses Some Shade At Tesla, Elon
“It is a misconception that you can simply develop a driver-assistance system further until one day you can magically jump to a fully autonomous driving system,” said Krafcik while being interviewed with Manager Magazin.
Krafcik also noted that Tesla isn’t a competitor in the field of autonomous vehicles. Although he seemed to compliment Tesla by noting that it’s “developing a really good driver-assistance system,” this really just seems like a good ole’ Southern backhanded compliment that is spoken sweetly over iced tea and accompanied by a fake smile. Especially since Bloomberg noted that Krafcik also said that Tesla’s full self-driving would “fail to live up to its billing.”
“For us, Tesla is not a competitor at all,” he said. “We manufacture a completely autonomous driving system. Tesla is an automaker that is developing a really good driver assistance system.”
Waymo, which is owned by Google, in my opinion, shouldn’t make the mistake that legacy automakers have made and doubt Tesla’s ability to keep its promises and meet its goals.
Level 5 Autonomy Is Coming To Teslas, Whether Waymo Likes It Or Not
Back in July, Elon Musk was at the virtual World AI Conference 2020 and shared how close he thinks Tesla is to reaching Level 5 autonomy. “I’m extremely confident that Level 5 or essentially complete autonomy will happen, and I think will happen very quickly. I think at Tesla, I feel like we are very close to Level 5 autonomy. I think — I remain confident that we will have the basic functionality for Level 5 autonomy complete this year,” he said. You can read more of the techy details here.
George Hotz, the founder of Comm.ai, which focuses on machine learning–based vehicle automation, shared his thoughts in August 2019 on Tesla and Level 5 during an interview with Lex Fridman.“Oh! Tesla’s gonna win Level 5. They really are,” Hotz said excitedly.
Hotz also spoke about Tesla’s focus on lane keeping and full autonomy. “A ton better approach. Because Tesla is gathering data on a scale that none of them are. They’re putting real users behind the wheel of cars. It is, I think, the only strategy that works,” Hotz replied.
The 2010s was the decade of the EV race. Tesla was beginning and many were laughing and ridiculing, up until 2019. In the 2020s, it’s now the decade of the autonomous vehicle, and I think we can see sort of the same thing — companies are confidently saying that Tesla will fail at autonomy.
We’ll see.
Note that Elon Musk has now responded to this article:
To my surprise, Tesla has better AI hardware & software than Waymo (money)
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 25, 2021
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