Among the ones remaining in the fight are Tesla and Waymo.<\/p>\n
Tesla has been on a mission to launch fully autonomous self-driving cars for well over a decade now, during which billionaire CEO Elon Musk has constantly made promises<\/a> that so far are unfulfilled. The company\u2019s robotaxi service launched its first public trials in June, albeit not without problems<\/a>.<\/p>\n Waymo, originally known as the Google self-driving car project, started in 2009 and was spun out of Google in 2016 to become a subsidiary under Alphabet, Google\u2019s parent company. Up till now, Waymo has focused on just developing robotaxis\u2014unlike Tesla, which has been more focused on the larger concept of self-driving as a whole. The company recently closed a $5.6 billion<\/a> funding round in October 2024.<\/p>\n Current State of Competition<\/p>\n The situation on the ground is that Waymo already has a self-driving system working in multiple cities with 250,000 weekly riders<\/a>, while Tesla has just started testing<\/a> in public. The difference is so overwhelming, a few dozen trips versus millions, but Tesla is betting on exponential growth\u2014the idea that once they have the technology figured out, they will be able to expand very quickly.<\/p>\n While Waymo had to partner with manufacturers like Jaguar to produce their cars, Tesla already has millions of cars out on the roads that it hopes it can convert to fully autonomous robotaxis using software updates. The company has a lot of infrastructure already there, including the largest charging network and service centers in many cities.<\/p>\n However, the difference in strategy and technology between the two strongly suggests that Waymo is here for the kill.<\/p>\n Musk joked during Tesla\u2019s earnings call earlier this year that Waymo costs \u201c\u2018way mo\u2019 money.\u201d<\/p>\n Related Articles: Tesla Robotaxi Rollout: What to Know<\/a> | Tesla Sales Plummet in Europe: Is it the Anti-Musk Sentiment?<\/a> | Electric Drive: How China\u2019s BYD Is Racing Ahead in the EV Market<\/a><\/p>\n Difference in Self-Driving Technology and Methodology<\/p>\n The most apparent technological difference between the two is in equipment.<\/p>\n Waymo and most of the industry believe the path to reliable self-driving cars is through the use of cameras and other sensors such as LIDAR and radar. These sensors help push Waymo\u2019s cars towards 100% reliability as they measure the distance and speed of everything on the road. Tesla wants to do it with just cameras and machine learning.<\/p>\n Musk has repeatedly argued that true self-driving capability will be achieved through using just cameras, similar to how humans only navigate the road with their eyes.<\/p>\n \u201cLidar is lame,\u201d Musk said in 2019. \u201cIn cars, it\u2019s friggin\u2019 stupid. It\u2019s expensive and unnecessary.\u201d<\/p>\n Currently, Lidar technology used by Waymo and other competitors costs approximately $12,000 per vehicle, while an only-cameras setup costs just $400. This once again plays into Tesla\u2019s long-shot bet of exponential growth. Waymo\u2019s vehicles carry 29 cameras and 11 other sensors compared<\/a> to Tesla\u2019s 8 cameras.<\/p>\n However, the difference in technology extends to methodology as well.<\/p>\n Waymo has been testing self-driving cars without a safety driver since 2017<\/a>. Even when Cruise rushed to become the first to launch a robotaxi service in a major city, Waymo was already operating<\/a> in less risky areas like suburban Phoenix.<\/p>\n Waymo\u2019s approach has been excruciatingly patient and careful. The company initially spent years mapping the cities it was supposed to launch in, which is used to create a \u201cgeofence\u201d that the robotaxis stay inside of.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Waymo has the advantage of Google\u2019s Maps team, but Tesla does not face a lack of data, considering the number of cars it has on the road. Rather, Tesla chooses not to rely on this method, and their cars create a map on the fly while driving using cameras and machine learning. This puts Tesla\u2019s cars at a huge disadvantage when lighting conditions are not ideal, like in fog.<\/p>\n While Waymo is currently the industry leader, Chinese companies BYD<\/a> and Baidu<\/a> are close seconds on the list to have a piece of the trillion-dollar<\/a> robotaxi industry.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Editor\u2019s Note: The opinions expressed here by the authors are their own, not those of Impakter.com \u2014 In the Featured Photo: A Waymo robotaxi driving down the street, September 15, 2023. Featured Photo Credit: Unsplash<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Since the early 2010s, several companies have jumped into the race to have their own fully autonomous self-driving…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":87980,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,181,507,11,168,60403,10708,6777,40903,74,1019,60404,27958],"class_list":["post-87979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-elon-musk","tag-google","tag-google-x","tag-road-safety","tag-robotaxi","tag-self-driving-cars","tag-technology","tag-tesla","tag-tesla-robotaxi","tag-waymo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87979\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Waymo](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Screenshot-2025-08-16-at-9.04.18\u202fPM-300x188.jpg\")
Source: Google I\/O<\/a><\/p>\n