Waymo Co-founder Says Tesla Has An Advantage In Race To Autonomous Driving: 'I'd Rather Be In Tesla's Shoes Than In Waymo's Shoes'

Alphabet Inc. GOOG GOOGL subsidiary Waymo’s co-founder Anthony Levandowski is more optimistic about Tesla Inc.’s TSLA self-driving vision over Waymo’s given the EV giant’s wealth of data.

What Happened: “There’s millions of Teslas out there that are constantly alerting, feeding back their data to Tesla to make the product better, and that’s ultimately what’s really going to be the differentiator here — that you have the richest, most consistent data to continuously improve over time,” Levandowski said in an interview with Business Insider.

“I’d rather be in Tesla’s shoes than in Waymo’s shoes.”

Tesla uses camera footage from its existing fleet of vehicles to train its software aimed at enabling autonomous driving. Tesla’s fleet is significantly large and operates across the country as compared to Waymo which is only operating vehicles in a select few cities within the U.S. such as Phoenix and San Francisco.

Tesla, therefore, likely has much more data than Waymo across scenarios of driving to train its tech, the Waymo co-founder opined.

Why It Matters: Tesla unveiled its dedicated robotaxi offerings last week at an event in Los Angeles. The company unveiled two products – a two-seater Cybercab and a 20-seater Robovan with no steering wheels or pedals. The Cybercab, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said, will enter production “before 2027.”

Waymo, meanwhile, already operates robotaxis in select cities. The company deploys its sensor suite on vehicles manufactured by other automakers, such as Jaguar vehicles, for use as robotaxis, which by itself is a cost-extensive process.

“You probably need to buy a car company to be able to produce the cars that you want,” Levandowski reportedly said regarding Waymo. He left Waymo in 2016 after co-founding it in 2009.

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