// TECHCRUNCH — INTELLIGENZA ARTIFICIALE
Waymo goes on offense ahead of Tesla’s Cybercab launch
Waymo argued last week that fully autonomous vehicles are not possible without using a mix of sensors, and that “pure end-to-end” AI systems are not safe enough — shots at Tesla, despite the Alphabet-owned company not naming names.
The company took these swings in a blog post and an interview with Axios just one week ahead of a September 3 event where Tesla is expected to formally introduce its two-seater Cybercab into its own small-but-growing robotaxi fleet. Waymo also announced three new markets on Tuesday morning, further extending its robotaxi network, which is serving customers in more than a dozen U.S. cities.
Despite being technical and a bit wonky, Waymo’s claims kicked off a social media fight that lasted all weekend.
“Arguments they bring forward are poor,” Pierre Ferragu, an analyst and managing partner at New Street Research who covers Tesla, wrote on X. “My read: Waymo built a driving gas plant that AI at scale makes irrelevant, and now falls into incumbent rhetoric. Innovator dilemma 101.”
“How it feels to say your data and record of success leads you to believe driverless mileage, AI interpretability, and multiple sensor types are critical for safe, fully autonomous driving at scale,” wrote Ethan Teicher, a Waymo spokesperson, while sharing a John Wick promo image that depicts more than a dozen guns pointed at the head of Keanu Reeves’ character.
The metaphorical knives — or guns, apparently — are out because if Tesla can prove the Cybercab is capable of performing at scale, it would set up a major fight between the two companies and their disparate approaches to developing autonomous vehicles. At stake is a market that could be worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
For years, this fight was more academic or philosophical than anything. But last week Waymo flexed its real-world experience.
“Cameras are incredible, but they aren’t enough,” Srikanth Thirumalai, a VP who oversees Waymo’s driving software, wrote in the company’s blog post. “For years, there’s been a debate over whether cameras alone could solve full autonomy. Now, after more than 200 million real-world miles, the data is clear: safe, fully autonomous operations at scale require more. By combining inputs from cameras, lidar, and radar, the Waymo Driver creates a rich, redundant world view that no single sensor can replicate.”
Thirumalai also wrote that a pure end-to-end neural architecture that “takes in raw pixels and directly outputs steering commands” — which is Tesla’s approach to autonomy — will “run the risk of black box failures.”
“Even the best AI models with trillions of parameters still hallucinate,” he told Axios. “There is no click reboot or reload or refresh [in] physical AI. You have to deal with the consequences of it.”