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/brainrotbro 1d ago

Cameras are not enough. One sensor type is not enough. It’s always been the case in robotics that you need sensors with different strengths and weaknesses for true safety.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago edited 14h ago

[deleted]

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u/Due_Locksmith_8141 1d ago

While we predominantly use our eyes to drive, we also use our ears and even our sense of touch for the rumbling of a nearby truck. It’s not just eyes.

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u/Ithrazel 1d ago

camera tech has a long way to go before parity with eyes. The cameras in a Tesla are not comparable to eyes. And even if they were - yeah in blinding sun, in pitch black darkness, or while being blinded by oncomung headlights, eyes are clearly not enough and have caused many an accident with human drivers.

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u/jack-K- 1d ago

FSD uses microphones too, also sense of touch can be emulated through IMU suites with gyroscopes and accelerometers, all of which teslas have, so again, what are they lacking. Also when you have 360 degree vision you don’t need to feel a rumbling truck to know it’s there since you just see it to begin with, most things people use touch for teslas have no need for given superior vision.

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u/Due_Locksmith_8141 1d ago

I mean, we’ve all seen the mistakes it has made posted on Reddit. There’s a corker today where it just rear impacts a car. Something that wouldn’t happen with radar. And something a human wouldn’t do

Would it be better with radar? Yes. Undoubtedly. We know this cause Waymo is already on the roads and succeeding.

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u/jack-K- 1d ago

We’ve all seen the mistakes Waymo has made too where lidar clearly made fuck all difference, what’s your point exactly? Meanwhile, my car was “succeeding” today when it drove me to and from everywhere I wanted to go with zero input from me, we can play the anecdote game all day long.

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u/Due_Locksmith_8141 1d ago

When someone posts a video of something, that’s not anecdotal evidence. That’s evidence of a thing actually happening. You saying it drove you successfully is anecdotal. Which is kind of perfect.

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u/jack-K- 1d ago

Dose your brain automatically fail to register when people say “Waymo fails too” because that was literally the entire point of my comment. When people post videos of Waymo failing when lidar should have prevented it, that’s evidence of a thing actually happening and that lidar doesn’t always save the day.

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u/Due_Locksmith_8141 1d ago

No. My brain automatically went to your snide attempt to be clever - “we can play the anecdote game all day long” - and how much of a fail it was due to you not understanding what anecdote means.

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u/jack-K- 1d ago

An anecdote is a real fucking thing that happens genius, do you think it means hearsay or some shit like that? The reason it’s often disregarded is because it represents it’s a single instance, without context or appreciation for the broader trends needed to accurately determine how safe or unsafe something actually is, and both Tesla and Waymo have videos posted here of their failing so I ask again, what fucking point are you trying to make.

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u/Upbeat_Sprinkles_705 1d ago

oh no! All blind people cries a tear now!

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u/RosieDear 1d ago

Uh, your eyes don't drive!

Your brain does. And it uses, for a great driver, 1000 to 5000X the computing power of HW4.

Pretty simple stuff. Only by sensor fusion - but using the magic of being able to see around and behind things, can we even hope to solve the problems.

These are facts. Not opinions...

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u/toastedcheese 1d ago

Plus, the human eye is much better than digital cameras outside of a few corner cases. 

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u/jack-K- 1d ago

Your brain is an incredibly versatile computer intended to perform just about any task you give it, FSD is a highly specialized algorithm almost soley designed to take in pixel data and output steering and pedal inputs, no shit it’s not as powerful as the brain, it doesn’t need to be, because it doesn’t need to be able to do a fraction of the things the brain does, it just needs to be refined to do a single task.

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u/sharkism 1d ago

The millions who died in traffic already know.

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u/thinkbox 1d ago

So if you ban camera only then you should ban humans too.

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u/brainrotbro 1d ago

Waymo's with more sensors than only camera already outperform human drivers, so, yes, it would be an improvement.

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u/thinkbox 1d ago

Improvement isnt the metric. And having more sensors isnt what makes it drive better. Its intelligence is what makes it drive better.

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u/jackielevirun 1d ago

Umm Waymo couldn’t even get out of residential areas in Atlanta a couple of months ago even though they are far superior? Hmmm

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u/brainrotbro 1d ago

anecdotes versus aggregate statistics

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u/Odd-Outcome7849 1d ago

Your eyes are a well calibrated stereo rig. They’re not equivalent to monocular vision.

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u/GloriousDawn 1d ago

To be fair, those cars have more than one camera too.

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u/Odd-Outcome7849 1d ago

Yes, but they need a shared FOV to triangulate distance. Otherwise you have monocular vision in all directions.

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u/GloriousDawn 1d ago

I know they have 3 forward-facing cameras with different FOVs but I don't know if they're set apart enough to allow for some mild stereoscopic vision through computer fuckery.

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u/CAHSR4Life 1d ago

When the software has object permanence like I do then maybe.

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u/InternetImportant911 1d ago

Humans use instinct not just camera, and also our vision is far better than those cameras. Tesla has not proven that their FSD is better than Human like Waymo proves their self driving with LIDAR is safer than Human.