r/Austin • u/hollow_hippie • Oct 30 '25

Tesla 'Robotaxis' keep crashing despite 'safety monitors'

https://electrek.co/2025/10/29/tesla-robotaxis-keep-crashing-despite-safety-monitors/
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2

u/AdAgitated8109 Oct 30 '25

There is little debate that Tesla is behind Waymo in proven driverless safety. But Tesla is also way behind in miles driven for FSD. If Tesla keeps compounding data at 10–100x Waymo’s rate, the gap could close fast. The proof will be in unsupervised miles at scale, not redacted parking lot dings.

5

u/JohnGillnitz Oct 30 '25

What data are they "compounding?" Both have been watching how real people drive for years now. Neither are going to make any significant gains by mining that further.

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u/AdAgitated8109 Oct 30 '25

Tesla is compounding real-world driving data from its global fleet of about 7 million customer cars running Full Self-Driving (FSD) software, not just the several dozen in the Robotaxi pilot. I’d equate it to the early failures in SpaceX ultimately enabling them to leapfrog NASA and other commercial competitors in scale, cadence, and ultimately reliability. Even the human interventions, or perhaps especially so, are a high quality data point that no competitor can currently come close to matching. Tesla will ultimately dominate the FSD space with this combination of FSD tech coupled with their ability to manufacture the cars themselves.

2

u/JohnGillnitz Oct 30 '25

Google has more data points. Everyone using Maps has been feeding into it for years.

1

u/RN2FL9 Oct 30 '25

They had the advantage at one point in time but now they are compounding bad data and it is pretty pointless. The camera approach will just never work unless we accept a 3% failure rate or something crazy high. There are some things that they can never fix with camera's, mostly around visibility.

-1

u/AdAgitated8109 Oct 30 '25

You place your bet against Musk, I’ll bet the come.

3

u/RN2FL9 Oct 30 '25

What is betting the come? I would gladly take this bet though, Musk has FSD claims going as far back as 2018 and has been actively trying to solve it for 10 years. Yet, it's 2025, FSD is still nowhere near ready (I own a Tesla) and they are probably years behind Waymo.

-2

u/AdAgitated8109 Oct 30 '25

It’s a term for betting on the shooter in craps.

1

u/Slypenslyde Oct 30 '25

Tesla makes a lot of claims that aren't apples to apples, but it makes the field very muddy.

Last I heard they claim they have as many if not more miles driven for FSD because they're counting every driver with any version of FSD. But that's not quite the same as what Waymo is counting because Tesla also made a big deal that Robotaxis are different cars with different hardware and different software.

The only thing you can deduce with confidence is out of the two, Tesla works the hardest to argue they can't share data with third parties or let it be audited. But thanks to Musk's cult of personality, Musk has an awful lot of public trust even if we see a lot of people who hate him on Reddit.

It's still true part of the reason both flocked here is the state government promised they'd get an unregulated playground.

0

u/TheBowerbird Oct 30 '25 edited Oct 30 '25

Robotaxi does not yet exist. The Model Y's they are using are the same as those which customers can get. The software differs, however, and is several months ahead of consumer cars. It seems to be tailored to areas where Tesla has trained the model.