Tesla Researcher Says EV Giant Is Skipping A Step To Driverless Operations: 'It Took Waymo Three Years...'

Tesla Inc. TSLA researcher Troy Teslike on Friday criticized the EV giant’s approach to vehicle autonomy, saying that the company is skipping a step to driverless vehicle operations.

What Happened: Teslike noted that it took Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo three years from Oct. 2017 to Oct. 2020 to address all edge cases and transition from unsupervised testing with a safety driver present but not actively controlling the vehicle to fully driverless operations.

Currently, FSD requires the driver to pay active attention and be ready to take over at any moment. According to Teslike, there must be one more step after but before driverless operations where the driver does not have to actively supervise the vehicle’s operations but can check emails and the car informs you in advance if it wants you to take over.

“Before going driverless, the car is supposed to work without the driver watching the road all the time,” he said.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is, instead, planning to skip to driverless operations directly, Teslike said, while also terming it an “unrealistic plan.”

Why It Matters: During Tesla’s fourth-quarter earnings call in January, Musk said that the company will start testing autonomous ride-hailing service in Texas in June with vehicles deployed with FSD. 

“Teslas will be in the wild with no one in them in June in Austin… It’s literally five, six months away, five months away kind of thing,” Musk said while adding that the company expects its driverless vehicles to operate in several cities by year-end.

Musk has previously said that Tesla’s robotaxi fleet will function like a combination of Airbnb and Uber. While a certain portion of the fleet will be owned by Tesla, individual customers can also add or subtract their vehicles to the robotaxi fleet at will. As for riders, they can summon a car using the Tesla App, similar to Uber.

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Photo courtesy: Tesla