Comment by insane_dreamer
17 hours ago
This is generally the problem with self-driving cars, at least in my experience (Tesla FSD).
They don't look far enough ahead to anticipate what might happen and already put themselves in a position to prepare for that possibility. I'm not sure they benefit from accumulated knowledge? (Maybe Waymo does, that's an interesting question.) I.e., I know that my son's elementary school is around the corner so as I turn I'm already anticipating the school zone (that starts a block away) rather than only detecting it once I've made the turn.
Tesla FSD is leagues behind Waymo; generalizing based on your Tesla experience doesn't make sense.
Evidence of this? I own a Tesla (HW4, latest FSD) as well as have taken many Waymo rides, and have found both to react well to unpredictable situations (i.e. a car unexpectedly turning in front of you), far more quickly than I would expect most human drivers to react.
This certainly may have been true of older Teslas with HW3 and older FSD builds (I had one, and yes you couldn't trust it).
So... the thing is it's really not. They're behind on schedule, having just launched in public. But FSD has been showing capabilities in regular use (highway navigation, unprotected left turns in traffic, non-geofenced operation areas based solely on road markings) that Waymo hasn't even tried to deploy yet.
It's much more of a competition than I suspect a lot of people realize.
Intellectually this doesn't even compute. Waymo is tele-oped in like 5 cities and FSD works in 5 countries. It's not even close.