For example, Waymo claims 700k fully autonomous rides in 2023, which was more than ~0 Tesla rides that were fully autonomous in 2023.
To define fully autonomous, I'll use the simplest definition which is that no human operated any direct controls inside the vehicle like the steering wheel or pedals. (UPDATE: And no human in the car is actively monitoring the driving being ready to intervene.) A ride must be of a non-trivial distance (e.g. crossing the parking lot does not count).
I will delay resolution until both companies report results or until the result is extremely clear, or until it's January 2027, where I'll make an informed guess.
Update 2024-13-12 (PST): Rides in the Las Vegas Loop will not be counted towards Tesla's total, as they do not represent general self-driving capability on public roads. (AI summary of creator comment)
1,000
3.00Waymo's now at 5 million paid autonomous ride so far in 2025 and growing exponentially, says co-CEO Dmitri Dolgov at a talk at Google I/O the other day:
Elon Musk seems to be doubling down but the mention of going 100 miles without an intervention, impressive as that is compared to, say, a year ago, makes me think that Tesla is still at least a year away. Probably we should get the 2026 version of this market going?
Waymo's up to 200k rides per week, around 2 million in 2025 so far. Tesla has... a 20% chance of doing something that counts as a robotaxi launch in Austin in June.
I don't know what that translates to for this market. Maybe somewhere between 1% and 10%?
Waymo's up to 200k rides per week, around 2 million in 2025 so far.
Good to know. Do you have a source for that?
@cowgoesmoo Important piece of data, thank you. I know it's just one anecdote but if this ever happened in a million miles in a Waymo, that would be a very big deal. So I take this as further evidence that Waymo has many more 9's of reliability.
That’s a Wrap! Waymo’s 2024 Year in Review
We served over 4 million fully autonomous rides this year alone, bringing us to over 5 million rides total.
@HankyUSA different resolution criteria (US only different thresholds) might explain some of the discrepancy.
@HankyUSA Dang, it sure does keep improving. In case it's not obvious, there is a person in the driver's seat ready to intervene. I'm not updating much on that video but the following is bumping my probability up a little, though 2025 still seems pretty unrealistic: https://www.understandingai.org/p/teslas-robotaxi-strategy-looks-a
@JamesGrugett My thinking is that Tesla is not on track to hit SAE level 3 in 2025, let alone level 4. You're right that if it does, it can quickly shoot past Waymo. I just think that's a huge if.
(Review: Tesla is currently level 2, meaning a human has to be actively monitoring and ready to instantly intervene. Level 3 is roughly, human in the driver's seat, can read a book but not fall asleep and has to be ready to intervene quickly if the AI beeps at you. And level 4 is like Waymo, with no human in the driver's seat.)
@JamesGrugett Even if Tesla figures out level 4, they won't just enable it for every Tesla everywhere right away, especially since level 4 means taking legal responsibility as the driver. It will probably be limited to certain cities at first. It will probably be available for certain models before others. Tesla owners will likely need to to pay (perhaps repeatedly) to enable the feature, and not all Tesla owners will want to use the feature regardless of price. Even if Tesla is unwise enough to rush ahead, there's going to be an incident, backlash and legal trouble, triggering Tesla to backpedal.
Of course that's all assuming Tesla figures out level 4 this year.
Tesla has the most data and exponential progress in self driving.
Quantity of data is not the only thing to consider. There's also the quality of the data and how it's being used. I suspect Waymo has higher quality data and uses it better.
How are you measuring progress in self driving such that Tesla's progress is exponential?
2.5 million teslas vs 1k waymos driving around.
One Waymo taxi driving around completes far more rides than one Tesla that spends far more time parked.
Waymo owns and maintains their vehicles. They can maintain and manage their fleet in whatever way they need to make level 4 possible. The hardware on those vehicles was designed over many iterations for nothing less than level 4. Waymo can further adapt the hardware design if needed to solve challenges such as poor weather conditions.
Tesla designed the hardware in its vehicles for level 2 and maybe someday level 4 according to their historically-overoptimistic CEO. Tesla probably prioritized aesthetics, production cost, and low maintenance more than Waymo did because Tesla had to actually sell the vehicles to consumers. I expect level 4 with such hardware is a greater challenge. Tesla must either reach level 4 with the hardware they sold years ago without the ability to adapt the hardware or they must require vehicle owners to get their hardware upgraded.
Shouldn't this market be like ~50%?
If you believed that then wouldn't your limit orders for YES be greater than 20%?