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I'm not any kind of Elon fan, but I think it is a little more nuanced than that. FSD is definitely more advanced than any regular competition. It is not as capable as Waymo, that is for sure, but that is not a car you can own.




Apart from the technical limitations of FSD, Elon hasn't thought through the business model. Claiming that Tesla cars will be capable of turning into robotaxis seemed plausible a decade ago before all the negative externalities of Airbnb became widely known.

Waymo isn't just the Waymo Driver technology and sensor suite. It's charging and cleaning depots. It's product support both for the customer and the vehicle that scales. It's an insane amount of LiDAR acquired 3-D mapping data, plus real time data from Google maps and navigation.

Meanwhile Tesla has replaced some of the drivers sitting in the front seat with chase cars. Just to make the technically correct claim that the cars are no longer supervised by someone in the car.


Their vision-only system will never live up to promises without inventing an AGI-level inference engine. Maintaining an aura that they are capable of doing this is part of the con. A kind of, shangri-la promise of harmonious one-true vision system that to date has not come true despite promises of its impending coming.



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