[johnyzee]

For Tesla to even be in the conversation with Waymo is very promising for the concept of low-tech solutions to autonomous vehicles, which in turn is very promising for how scalable this technology can be.

As far as I know, a self-driving Tesla, such as what they are operating in Texas, is almost the same hardware as an off-the-shelf Tesla, whereas each Waymo is a custom built vehicle, with added manufacturing costs (on top of the base vehicle) in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. The significance of the Tesla service being comparable to Waymos cannot be overstated IMHO.