Tesla and Waymo jab at each other over who has the best self-driving tech

Tesla and Waymo took to media and social media to spar over who has the best self-driving technology.

Waymo on Tesla

Waymo and Tesla have widely different approaches to developing full self-driving technology, but they both intend to come out of it with a system capable of driving a vehicle safer than humans can.

But in a new interview with manager-magazin, Waymo CEO John Krafcik argued that Tesla is not even a competitor to them:

For us, Tesla is not a competitor at all. We manufacture a completely autonomous driving system. Tesla is an automaker that is developing a really good driver assistance system. The difference is: Tesla warns its drivers to be sure to keep their hands on the steering wheel at all times, and reminds human drivers to check their car at all times. On our steering wheels it says: Do not touch.

Krafcik added:

This is not how it works in practice. It is a misconception that you can just keep developing a driver assistance system until one day you can magically leap to a fully autonomous driving system. In terms of robustness and accuracy, for example, our sensors are orders of magnitude better than what we see on the road from other manufacturers.

Waymo is known to use lidar sensors, which Tesla notoriously dislikes, and they also use HD mapping to autonomously navigate in cities where they offer their driverless service.

Tesla on Waymo

Tesla CEO Elon Musk responded to the new comments by Waymo’s CEO claiming that Tesla’s hardware and software is better:

To my surprise, Tesla has better AI hardware & software than Waymo (money).

As the automaker decided not to use lidar sensors, it has been betting on computer vision technology supported by camera and AI technology.

Tesla has developed its own chip with a neural net accelerator, which is likely what Musk is referencing with “AI hardware,” and the company is developing its own computer vision software on this chip.

What do you think of the comments made by Waymo’s CEO and Tesla’s CEO? Let us know in the comment section below.