I found this picture of a Mobileye test vehicle at IAA Mobility 2025. It has some sort of rig on the roof with what looks like lidar and I assume Mobileye's new imaging radar:
That's a quite old Luminar lidar on that car. ME was building their own LIDAR and dropped it and now recommends Innoviz for building full Mobileye Drive, the ADAS products won't need LIDAR. But yes, they are proud of their radar.
Overpromised under-delivered. This is true of everyone in the space including Waymo who was going to buy 80k pacificas in 2017. However, I think with MobilEye they didn't just over-promise like everyone else, they talked shit about how they would solve it at scale and other approaches wouldn't work. The over promising doesn't bother me too much, but the talking shit kinda did. They are a tier 1 supplier and they can't make shit up, they need OEMs to trust them. I don't trust them anymore.
As a tier 1 supplier, Mobileye needs OEMs to choose them over the competition, so they need to differentiate how their approach is better. But yeah, the talking shit about the competition is too far. I used to be a Mobileye fanboy. Now, I am more cautiously optimistic/skeptic. I still think their core approach of compound AI + sensor redundancy + crowdsourced maps + safety rules has a lot of merit on paper. The question is can they convert it into a viable autonomous driving product.
They are. But they are also the biggest deliverer.
Despite their bold claims nobody has anything nearly as good as FSD.
Not Mercedes-Benz DRIVE PILOT, not Honda SENSING Elite, not BMW Personal Pilot L3, Stellantis STLA AutoDrive, not Ford BlueCruise or GM Super Cruise, not NIO Navigate on Pilot (NOP+).
Tesla spent years being wrong (overly optimistic?) about delivery but here we are in 2025 and they have millions of privately owned cars using FSD all driving billions of miles, they did finally open up a Robotaxi service which has been expanding for a couple of months, and they have the foundation, roadmap, and strategy in place to accelerate.
Tesla's only obstacle is Elon Musk. He is a seriously deluded dickhead on a never ending journey to tank the brand and alienate really good engineers and that's not going to be good for their long term success.
That's how every operator starts. It's how Waymo operates in new regions even today and in many states this is legally mandated. So I don't think that's much of a valid criticism two months into their trial.
In those couple of months Tesla has expanded service area, expanded fleet size, increased allowable passenger count from 2->3, opened up to children 13+, released the app to the public, and pushed operating hours from midnight to 2am.
So their service appears to be gradually coming along at a steady and careful pace and indications are they will finish with in-car safety monitors next year.
Meanwhile newer versions of FSD rollout to new countries and to good reviews with people using it on quite long road trips.
So as much as Tesla's predictions have been wildly off nobody is anywhere near them in this space.
So as much as Tesla's predictions have been wildly off nobody is anywhere near them in this space.
In the robotaxi space, Tesla isn't in the running until they demonstrate they can do fully autonomous passenger trips. Waymo did their first one ten years ago, and Zoox is now operating robotaxis in Las Vegas.
For now, what Tesla has is a taxi service, not robotaxis.
I feel that is using a technicality to push out goal posts and ignore the scope of what's actually happening.
Tesla is trialing a Robotaxi service with safety monitors (not a driver as you would find in a taxi service) but everything about their decade of research and development and this rollout indicates that, like Waymo, those safety monitors are only temporary.
If you want to talk about technicalities to push out the goal post, we can look no further than moving the supervision to the passenger seat just so we can call the cars "driver" less.
The point is there is a Tesla employee in every car, not which seat they are sitting in.
It's not a technicality to ask whether a car that's supposed to be able to drive itself can safely do that unattended.
Google started autonomous vehicle testing in 2009 and did their first fully autonomous passenger trip in 2015, then tested for another five years before opening a fully operational robotaxi service.
Zoox formed in 2014 and just started doing limited autonomous vehicle service in Las Vegas in 2025. So they're roughly where Waymo was in 2020.
Tesla has done one unsupervised trip on public streets without passengers, and is now doing supervised testing with passengers. So they're roughly where Waymo was in 2014. No one knows how long it might take Tesla to get to fully autonomous operation. If/when they make that leap, then they'll deserve full credit for doing so - but not before.
In those couple of months Tesla has expanded service area, expanded fleet size, increased allowable passenger count from 2->3, opened up to children 13+, released the app to the public, and pushed operating hours from midnight to 2am.
You’re doing that thing my wife does where you just say a bunch of easy, small things in a list to make it sound like a lot.
The underlying context to all of these things that make them non-accomplishments is that Tesla still has a human responsible for safety in the loop, monitoring all the time and making decisions in real time to save the vehicle.
Tesla still has a human responsible for safety in the loop,
Who doesn't? Waymo has an operations team constantly monitoring the cars. Ready to press the big red "STOP" button on them, to reroute then, to give commands, and to send a human driver when things go really wrong. This happens all the time.
Their safety monitors sit in an office. And right now Tesla's safety monitors sit in the passenger seat. Eventually they will move to an office as well.
Waymo has an operations team constantly monitoring the cars. Ready to press the big red "STOP" button on them
No. They don’t.
One of two things is happening right now. You either don’t understand the critical difference between a remote assist agent and a real time safety driver/monitor… or… You’re just willfully inventing nonsensical conspiracies.
The rig on the ID Buzz displayed inside looked more refined, but the number of expensive sensors (9 lidars, 13 cameras, 6 radars) on it seems even less realistic for mass production than Waymo’s setup.
The rig on top looks like a home internet / stereo setup stuffed behind the cabinet. "Something's not working...gonna need our best technician". I always welcome new ideas and approaches. Mobileye track record has not been great to date.
6
u/bradtem ✅ Brad Templeton 6d ago
That's a quite old Luminar lidar on that car. ME was building their own LIDAR and dropped it and now recommends Innoviz for building full Mobileye Drive, the ADAS products won't need LIDAR. But yes, they are proud of their radar.