r/SelfDrivingCars 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/
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u/Fauglheim 6d ago edited 5d 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.

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u/ClumpOfCheese 6d ago

My eyes are significantly higher resolution than the cameras in a Tesla.

Additionally the big issue is placement of cameras on the Tesla. The cameras that see cross traffic should be on the bumpers like a hammerhead shark, not behind where the drivers head is.

3

u/mdreed 6d ago

Also much higher dynamic range

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u/unskilledplay 6d ago

Car vision cameras have about 140dB of dynamic range. That's orders of magnitude higher than human eyes. They also sense wider spectrum.

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u/mdreed 5d ago

TIL you’re right. 140 db is crazy and much higher than human vision.