Because lying about having "full self driving" is easy if you have no shame. Making a product that works and can pass regulatory muster to create a no-driver robotaxi is hard.
Tesla's FSD has different approach / tradeoffs compared to dedicated robotaxi services. FSD has to be cheap and energy efficient, run completely on-board, and it must work everywhere. They're trying to do more with less, which has so far been impossible. Their cybercab and robotaxi service will probably work more like Waymo, with a slightly relaxed set of limitations.
Some differences compared to Waymo:
- Waymo has / can use more on-board compute, from [0] "It has also been revealed that Waymo is using around four NVIDIA H100 GPUSs at a unit price of 10,000 dollars per vehicle to cover the necessary computing requirements."
- Waymo uses remote operators. This includes humans but can also have remote compute.
- Waymo's neural network model can be trained / overfit on specific route or area. FSD uses the same model everywhere.
- Waymo's on-board hardware can use more energy, because it's possible to charge the battery between trips.
- Robotaxi services charge customers per mile, so it makes sense to run longer routes which are also easier to drive, i.e. the routing algorithm can be tuned to avoid challenging routes. This would be possible to implement on FSD too, but it seems that FSD drives fastest route.
You'd think the biggest win would be in the middle:
We have an interstate highway system that's fairly well-maintained and understood, and is a finite space to map. Hypertrain on that, and you can offer an experience of 10 minutes hands-on-wheel at the start and end of the journey, and 3 hours of doomscrolling in the driver's seat. The highway miles are the most boring, both from a surprise-hazard standpoint and from a driver's-attention standpoint (there's nothing cool or interesting to see except the trunk lid of the car in front of you)
It offers a nationwide level of service that Waymo's city-by-city rollout lacks, and the chance for route-specific hueristics that Tesla's cameras-and-local-compute might miss.
Waymo specifically claims they never do remote human piloting. The car will present a remote human operator a choice of routes to get out of a situation, and the human will pick one. Remote piloting is way too risky.
Well, I'd understand why it's difficult to extend to nationwide or even statewide just because of all the variations in road/driving conditions. So I can get how FSD never got certified at either scale. However, given their experience and plethora of data collected, I would have expected they'd be among the first get robotaxis in select cities. Idk, just struck me as odd is all. I figured I'd tee off this comment because someone might have an more informed insight into the why of it.
Because calling a feature “Full Self Driving” is a lot easier than making a car that is capable of fully driving itself without a human at the wheel to immediately take over in situations that regularly occur.
I certainly hope they won't be the last. For a healthy market, we need at least 3 viable competitors. Waymo is viable, Cruise has pulled out, and Tesla is questionable.
Idk, every competitors system at this point is basically glorified lane keep adaptive cruise control. Similar to the standard Tesla Autopilot but far from Tesla's FSD.
jordanb|9 months ago
MaxikCZ|9 months ago
cyanydeez|9 months ago
Geee|9 months ago
Some differences compared to Waymo:
- Waymo has / can use more on-board compute, from [0] "It has also been revealed that Waymo is using around four NVIDIA H100 GPUSs at a unit price of 10,000 dollars per vehicle to cover the necessary computing requirements."
- Waymo uses remote operators. This includes humans but can also have remote compute.
- Waymo's neural network model can be trained / overfit on specific route or area. FSD uses the same model everywhere.
- Waymo's on-board hardware can use more energy, because it's possible to charge the battery between trips.
- Robotaxi services charge customers per mile, so it makes sense to run longer routes which are also easier to drive, i.e. the routing algorithm can be tuned to avoid challenging routes. This would be possible to implement on FSD too, but it seems that FSD drives fastest route.
[0] https://thelastdriverlicenseholder.com/2024/10/27/waymos-5-6...
hakfoo|9 months ago
We have an interstate highway system that's fairly well-maintained and understood, and is a finite space to map. Hypertrain on that, and you can offer an experience of 10 minutes hands-on-wheel at the start and end of the journey, and 3 hours of doomscrolling in the driver's seat. The highway miles are the most boring, both from a surprise-hazard standpoint and from a driver's-attention standpoint (there's nothing cool or interesting to see except the trunk lid of the car in front of you)
It offers a nationwide level of service that Waymo's city-by-city rollout lacks, and the chance for route-specific hueristics that Tesla's cameras-and-local-compute might miss.
dcrazy|9 months ago
noitpmeder|9 months ago
DistractionRect|9 months ago
brandonagr2|9 months ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQir90MktRc
Just because it's supervised doesn't mean its not self driving
affinepplan|9 months ago
mensetmanusman|9 months ago
kcb|9 months ago
dragonwriter|9 months ago
paxys|9 months ago
k4rli|9 months ago
bryanlarsen|9 months ago
andrewmcwatters|9 months ago
kcb|9 months ago
tim333|9 months ago