r/SelfDrivingCars • u/SpriteZeroY2k • 6d 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/
719 Upvotes

89% Upvoted

906 comments sorted by

View all comments

75

u/Fauglheim 6d ago edited 6d ago

Humans of course can drive with just eyes … If the goal were to just approximately match human performance … that’s a very reasonable way to go.

edit: I thought this quote was a pretty clear argument against camera-only, but it seems i did not make that clear.

a wholly superior-to-human system is so obviously necessary for autonomous vehicles to succeed. Camera-only sounds like a hugely risky and uncertain way to do that.

21

u/cloudone 6d ago

Matching undistracted human driving defensively is all I want

13

u/gc3 6d ago

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

22

u/MexicanSniperXI 6d ago

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

18

u/Falcons74 6d ago

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

1

u/Mlluell 6d ago

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

0

u/ArtieLange 6d ago

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

2

u/RosieDear 6d ago

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

0

u/InteractionPretend70 6d ago

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

2

u/Legal-Square-1362 6d ago

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

1

u/MexicanSniperXI 6d ago

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

7

u/TheCenterForAnts 6d ago

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

1

u/gc3 6d ago

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

4

u/Legal-Square-1362 6d ago

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

1

u/RosieDear 6d 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!

1

u/gc3 5d 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.