I know I’ve been harping on the idea that the Autopilot and Full Self-Driving systems Tesla currently offers or plans to soon offer in their cars are not, despite how they’re marketed, anything close to being fully autonomous. In fact, they’re just , and even if , they’re not. If you, like most Tesla fans, think I’m a drooling simpleton who needs to keep his stupid mouth shut, that’s okay, because it , is on the same page as me.

Krafcik stated that he felt Tesla is “no competitor at all” for Waymo when it comes to full autonomy, suggesting that Waymo’s sensor suite is “orders of magnitude better” than what Tesla offers.

And, really, this is hardly surprising. Where Tesla’s cars are able to look sleek and free of clunky hardware because they rely on a system of small cameras, radar, and ultrasonic sensors, , as they have a much more robust setup that includes a 360 degree Lidar dome, multiple radar and camera installations, and perimeter Lidar transceivers:

I’m not sure if Waymo’s vehicles are employing redundant sensor systems or sensor cleaning systems, but both of those would be needed for full autonomy as well.

Maybe Waymo has more aesthetic challenges than Tesla, but for full Level 5 autonomy, you’d need such a robust sensor suite.

Regarding whether Tesla may be able to keep developing their current Autopilot and FSD driver-assist systems into , Krafcik is more skeptical:

“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.”

I’m inclined to agree, as I’ve yet to see Tesla solve the biggest issue to moving past L2 semi-autonomy, Though, to be fair, I have yet to see Waymo demonstrate such a system, either.

I would also like to point out that the Google-translation of the Waymo article does include one very striking sentence:

I assume that’s a mistranslation of “robotaxi,” but I suppose it’s possible Waymo has also developed a bold new fundraising strategy, too.