[Disclaimer] I worked for Cruise for 4 years.
I agree with everything you said, but chuckled at this particular part (which is very wrong):
> Tesla is significantly ahead of everyone else.
Everyone in the industry knows that Tesla is nowhere near the tip of the technology. What Tesla does is _fantastic marketing_. Their whole self-driving division is just a mechanism to sell more cars.
At a high level, this is why:
- The hard thing about self driving isn't the first 95%, it's the impossibly long tail of the last 5% with unique, chaotic and rare scenarios (think, a reflective citern tank with a reflection of the back of a truck transporting stop signs, or terrible weather illusions with fog).
- Doing well on the last 5% is where most of the energy from Waymo/Cruise goes (the two leaders by quite a margin).
- Tesla is camera only. Weather alone means you can't reach critical safety because of this. Cameras don't do fog well, precipitation well, or sunsets/bad lighting well (see many Tesla crashes on freeways bc of this)
- Tesla does well on the 95% and Elon is a marketing genius, with those 2 things it's easy to convince outsiders that "Tesla is significantly ahead of everyone else".
My prediction: before the end of the decade, cruise and waymo have commoditized fleets doing things that most people today would find unbelievable. Tesla is still talking a big game but ultimately won't have permits for you to be in a Tesla with your hands off of the wheel.
edit: formatting and typo
I agree with everything you said, but chuckled at this particular part (which is very wrong): > Tesla is significantly ahead of everyone else.
Everyone in the industry knows that Tesla is nowhere near the tip of the technology. What Tesla does is _fantastic marketing_. Their whole self-driving division is just a mechanism to sell more cars.
At a high level, this is why:
- The hard thing about self driving isn't the first 95%, it's the impossibly long tail of the last 5% with unique, chaotic and rare scenarios (think, a reflective citern tank with a reflection of the back of a truck transporting stop signs, or terrible weather illusions with fog).
- Doing well on the last 5% is where most of the energy from Waymo/Cruise goes (the two leaders by quite a margin).
- Tesla is camera only. Weather alone means you can't reach critical safety because of this. Cameras don't do fog well, precipitation well, or sunsets/bad lighting well (see many Tesla crashes on freeways bc of this)
- Tesla does well on the 95% and Elon is a marketing genius, with those 2 things it's easy to convince outsiders that "Tesla is significantly ahead of everyone else".
My prediction: before the end of the decade, cruise and waymo have commoditized fleets doing things that most people today would find unbelievable. Tesla is still talking a big game but ultimately won't have permits for you to be in a Tesla with your hands off of the wheel.
edit: formatting and typo