Tesla Technology Criticised by Rival Waymo

Waymo, the self-driving taxi company resulting from a Google project, has indirectly criticised Tesla for relying solely on cameras to provide data to its autonomous vehicle systems.

According to Waymo, cameras alone are insufficient to ensure safety. Srikanth Thirumalai, Waymo’s Vice President of Onboard Software, stated in a blog post that the 320 million kilometres travelled by the company’s autonomous vehicles proves the necessity of using LiDAR and radar sensors in addition to cameras.

“Cameras are indeed extraordinary, but cameras alone are not enough. For years, there has been a debate regarding whether cameras alone can achieve full autonomy. Now, after travelling more than 200 million miles in the real world, the data is clear: safe and fully autonomous vehicle operation at scale requires more than that,” said Thirumalai, as quoted by Drive on Monday local time.

Thirumalai noted that cameras allow Waymo vehicles to read road signs and detect traffic light colours. Meanwhile, LiDAR can generate three-dimensional models of the surrounding environment with millimetre precision, while radar can penetrate rain and fog conditions.

Without directly naming Elon Musk’s company, the Waymo executive reiterated his criticism of Tesla. He stated that Tesla’s approach of developing driver assistance systems into fully autonomous systems is inferior to Waymo’s approach.

“You can run billions of kilometres through simulation or with human supervision, but an autonomous vehicle (AV) system is truly mature when the system is fully responsible for the driving task. Full autonomy forces the system to face the real consequences of every decision and reveals new situations that might be inadvertently ignored by humans or simulations,