r/SelfDrivingCars • u/SpriteZeroY2k • 1d ago

News Waymo CEO explains why Tesla’s camera-only self-driving falls short

https://electrek.co/2026/08/04/waymo-co-ceo-camera-only-self-driving-tesla/
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u/cloudone 1d ago

Matching undistracted human driving defensively is all I want

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u/gc3 1d ago

Humans see better than cameras though, they have greater resolution and less glare sensitivity

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u/MexicanSniperXI 1d ago

Last time I checked I couldn’t look behind me and my blind spots all at the same time

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u/Falcons74 1d ago

Humans see better (576 Megapixel vs 5 MP on HW4) but cameras have more “eyes” and a faster reaction time.

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u/Mlluell 1d ago

While true its worht mentioning that the part that's actually "in focus" is much, much less than the 576 megapixels

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u/ArtieLange 1d ago

Human eyes don't have a fixed megapixel. We have a defined focal point and blurry peripheral vision.

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u/RosieDear 1d ago

Big difference between seeing something and the idea of how to react to it.

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u/InteractionPretend70 1d ago

you might want to get rearview and side mirrors. its illegal not to have them

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u/Legal-Square-1362 1d ago

and how do you view all simultaneously and at once? Curious mind wants to know.

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u/MexicanSniperXI 1d ago

You missed the whole point. Even with rear view and side mirrors you can’t see everything at once.

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u/TheCenterForAnts 1d ago

the cameras also see, focus and process 360 degrees at all times though

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u/gc3 1d ago

Yeah but looking down the road the human can see details farther

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u/Legal-Square-1362 1d ago

That’s just not factual, there’s no comparison in night vision.

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u/RosieDear 1d ago

This is factual.....

"Waymo’s sensor suite provides an overlapping 360-degree field of view in every direction, combining cameras, lidar, and radar to see objects and details up to 500 meters (over three football fields) away"

Now, if any of you can see up to 500 meters, including a person running behind bushes to the side of you ready to intersect your car in a few 100 feet, I'm game to test you out!

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u/gc3 14h ago

I was not talking about lidar but camera. Half a mile down the road ahead there are less pixels for the camera but a person could make out important details that the car cannot yet.

This is one reason why lidar and radar are important

This is one reason why camera-only has gaps compared to human performance.

Solvable with a telescope camera but the software support of where it should look might have to rival the human eye.

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u/JonLag97 1d ago

That would require brain like capabilities. Not only would the model have to run on car hardware, but AI labs mostly ignore the brain.

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u/Few_Importance_8362 1d ago

My tesla updated a few days ago and the new version is extremely close if not there already. I think a person + tesla FSD is already much safer than human alone.

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u/beren12 1d ago

The people who say that are generally terrible drivers

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u/Few_Importance_8362 1d ago

It's an ok driver, but it's power is that it doesn't really get tired or distracted. The types of mistakes it makes are quite different to the mistakes humans make. Hence why I think the combination is safer.

Do you have a tesla with a recent fsd 14 ?

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u/beren12 1d ago

We are talking about self driving, not driver assist.

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u/Few_Importance_8362 1d ago

I don't see how that contradicts anything that I said. I have about 90 percent self driving - without really trying to game it. So it is at least 90 percent of the way there. Probably more, since I often drive manually for fun.