{"id":82045,"date":"2025-04-25T11:26:17","date_gmt":"2025-04-25T15:26:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/autosector.com\/?p=82045"},"modified":"2025-04-25T11:26:17","modified_gmt":"2025-04-25T15:26:17","slug":"waymo-founder-tesla-hoped-to-compete-but-failed-utterly-completely-10-yrs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/?p=82045","title":{"rendered":"Waymo founder: Tesla hoped to compete with Waymo, but failed utterly and completely for 10 yrs"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\"Waymo
\n\t\t\t\tSource: Waymo\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

John Krafcik, Waymo founder and former CEO, clapped back at Tesla CEO Elon Musk after his comments on Waymo at Tesla\u2019s earnings earlier this week.<\/p>\n

He brought a little dose of reality to Musk\u2019s delusions.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

During Tesla\u2019s earnings call, CEO Elon Musk made a bunch of new claims about updated timelines for Tesla to deliver on long-promised self-driving milestones<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Musk even stated that he doesn\u2019t see anyone competing with Tesla on autonomous driving and that he believes Tesla will take \u201c90-something percent market share.\u201d<\/p>\n

\tAdvertisement – scroll for more content<\/span><\/p>\n

When explicitly asked about Waymo, which is already seen as the market leader by most experts, Musk again claimed that it won\u2019t be competitive because of cost:<\/p>\n

\n

Well, okay. The issue with Waymo\u2019s cars is it costs way more money, but that is the issue. The car is very expensive, made in low volume. Teslas are probably cost 25% or 20% of what a Waymo costs and made in very high volume. So, ironically, like, we\u2019re the ones to make the bet that a pure AI solution with cameras and what do you have? The car actually will listen for sirens and that kind of thing. It\u2019s the right move. And Waymo decided that an expensive sensor suite is the way to go, even though Google is very good at AI. So I\u2019m wondering. And it is worth noting that Tesla has both an incredible AI software team and AI hardware chip design team.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

While it\u2019s true that Waymo\u2019s vehicles are more expensive, this has little to do with an \u201cexpensive sensor suite\u201d, as Musk claimed. <\/p>\n

Tesla\u2019s sensor suite, which consists only of cameras, is certainly less expensive than Waymo\u2019s, which includes cameras, radar, and lidar sensors. Still, most of the cost difference is due to Tesla building vehicles in high volumes for consumers while Waymo buys existing vehicles and retrofits them with its sensor suite in much lower volumes.<\/p>\n

Talking to Business Insider<\/a> this week, John Krafcik, who helped launch Google\u2019s self-driving vehicle program and was Waymo\u2019s first CEO until 2021, doesn\u2019t see it as a problem:<\/p>\n

\n

In the long run, the cost of sensors has a \u201ctrivial cost-per-mile impact over the useful life of a robotaxi,\u201d he told BI,\u201d while also providing massive quantifiable safety benefits.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Krafcik has been skeptical of Tesla\u2019s efforts for a while and even suggested that what Tesla plans to launch in Austin in June could amount to \u201cfaking\u201d self-driving<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Now, the former Waymo CEO highlights how it\u2019s not the first time Musk claimed that Tesla would compete with Waymo, but it is yet to happen:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cTesla\u00a0has never competed with\u00a0Waymo\u00a0\u2014 they\u2019ve never sold a robotaxi ride to a public rider, but they\u2019ve sold a lot of cars. And although Tesla hopes to compete with Waymo someday, they\u2019ve failed utterly and completely at this for each of the 10 years they\u2019ve been talking about it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This week, Waymo announced that it is now completing 250,000 self-driving rides per week.<\/p>\n

In June, Tesla plans to launch a limited \u201c10 to 20-car\u201d fleet to provide geo-fenced and teleoperation-assisted rides in Austin.<\/p>\n

At this rate, it would take a while for Tesla to catch up to Waymo\u2019s volume and that\u2019s if it can.<\/p>\n

Krafcik added:<\/p>\n

\n

Well, after 10 years of undelivered promises, it seems pretty rational for those watching to be data- and evidence-driven. There\u2019s still a lot of promises, still no Tesla liability for FSD driving performance, and still no universal robotaxi service.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

After Tesla\u2019s earnings, the automaker announced that its \u201cFSD Supervised ride-hailing service\u201d operating for employees in Austin and San Francisco completed \u201cover 1,500 trips and 15,000 miles of driving.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, these were completed with drivers ready to take control, and even if they had no interventions in those 15,000 miles, it wouldn\u2019t be enough to prove a higher safety than human drivers, who crash on average every 700,000 miles.<\/p>\n

Electrek\u2019s Take<\/h2>\n

He has a point. No matter how much Tesla shareholders want to believe Musk when he says that Tesla is ahead, the truth is that when it launches its limited 10-20-car fleet in Austin, it will only now start to compete with Waymo.<\/p>\n

By that time, Waymo might be doing over 300,000 rides per week, and there\u2019s no evidence that Tesla will be able to scale faster yet. <\/p>\n

Just like Waymo, Tesla\u2019s fleet will be geo-fenced and teleoperation-assisted as there\u2019s no evidence that Tesla\u2019s generalized solution is anywhere close to working.<\/p>\n

In short, Tesla has the same scaling limitation as Waymo, other than potentially mapping, but even that\u2019s a question mark.<\/p>\n

\n

FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links.<\/em> More.<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Source: Waymo John Krafcik, Waymo founder and former CEO, clapped back at Tesla CEO Elon Musk after his comments on Waymo at Tesla\u2019s earnings earlier this week. He brought a little dose of reality to Musk\u2019s delusions. During Tesla\u2019s earnings call, CEO Elon Musk made a bunch of new claims about updated timelines for Tesla […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8313,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-e-cars"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=82045"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82045\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=82045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=82045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=82045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}