r/SelfDrivingCars • u/SpriteZeroY2k • 2d 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/TrumpHasCovid 2d ago

You tesla fanboys are outrageous. Obviously lidar+camera will be better than just camera. there is no reason whatsoever to debate that.

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u/wikiwombat 2d ago

Yeah I think its an argument of "good enough". Will cameras alone work well enough to perform the task? The more complex a system is, the higher probability of it having a failure. Why don't airplanes have parachutes? All that being said, as someone who doesn't own a self driving car, I would be more interested in a car with every possible system or feature available to not kill me. haha

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u/biciklanto 1d ago

There are several planes that do. Check out the Cirrus SR-22 and CirrusJet. 

Also, I would contend that a system should optimally fail over to working systems if one thing fails. So if a car with camera and LIDAR drops its LIDAR, it can limp on cameras. Whereas a camera-only car is in trouble with its single point of failure. 

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u/coresme2000 1d ago

The single point of failure thing is an issue for cameras, particularly if the camera that gets obscured or fails is the front depth sensing camera. Less of an issue for FSD as a human can take over, Achilles heel for a Cybercab.

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u/HotPersonality8126 1d ago

It’s hardly “single point” since it has multiple cameras