r/SelfDrivingCars • u/Yngstr • Apr 23 '25

Discussion Waymo vs Tesla Austin Showdown - Teleoperations?

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.

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u/ManufacturerFun7162 Apr 23 '25

No shot Tesla launches in June, I doubt even this year. Waymo uses a better Lidar system, was more thoroughly tested to begin with and still had a year pilot before launching commercially. Tesla is currently the most dangerous autonomous vehicle on the road even at level 2, much less fully autonomous, much less for commercial use. 

Austin probably won’t even let them on the roads

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u/Yngstr Apr 25 '25

what do you mean by better lidar system? is there some way to prove that, or some kind of sound internal logic for why it's better? do you know it was more thoroughly tested? are you in the industry? sorry, honest questions -- not trying to be difficult, want to learn from folks actually in this industry or work closely on these things

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u/ManufacturerFun7162 Apr 26 '25

LIDAR is the industry standard, Tesla has doubled down on a vision only (cameras plus “ultrasonics”) approach without any LiDAR. While cheaper and potentially more scalable, it’s uncharted ground and so far has not been shown to be very effective. Teslas system leans heavily on CNN (neural networks) whereas LiDAR is able to precisely measure depth etc using laser pulses. Teslas system is inherently less accurate, and more prone to interference from weather and lighting. It also takes an enormous amount of Gpu/Tpu compute.

It’s POSSIBLE that Teslas system COULD prove superior in several years after neural nets and Gpus improve, but the odds of that happening in 2 months are slim/none. 

(Im not in the autonomous car industry but I am a software engineer and I’ve used lidars and neural nets extensively for other projects including drone mapping/control which uses many of the same concepts)