Waymo CEO dismisses Tesla self-driving plan: “This is not how it works”
I worked with a self-driving product team a couple of years ago. Tesla's approach was looked upon with suspicion and often openly mocked.Tesla's entire self-driving strategy is led by Karpathy, who while brilliant, is an under-experienced researcher with a narrow expertise in large scale 2D CNNs. Tesla (and Comma.ai ?) seem to be the only groups that find Lidar unnecessary for L5 self-driving.I completely agree with this article. I avoid using cruise control and auto-lane-keep for the same reasons. Either I am in control or I am not. Anything in between is a recipe for distraction, and by proxy, disaster.On the other hand, I can see Tesla's strategy paying off as a low probability win but no lose situation. If 3d lidar is necessary, then I think Waymo (Alphabet) is closest to self-driving success. If they 'win', I see them licensing their tech to every other manufacturer. In such an outcome, Tesla ends up no worse than all of its competitors. It is a no-lose scenario. However, in the unlikely scenario that 2D videos are sufficient for L5 self-driving, Tesla wins BIG. No one will be even close, especially due to the scale of 2D data that they have gathered.