Zoox co-founder on Tesla self-driving: 'they don't have technology that works'
Zoox co-founder and CTO Jesse Levinson doesn't believe Tesla will launch a robotaxi ride-hailing service in California (or anywhere else) next year
The “fundamental issue is they don’t have technology that works,” Levinson said Wednesday at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024. “And by works, I want to differentiate between a driver assistance system that drives most of the time — except when it doesn’t, and then you have to take over — versus a system that’s so reliable and robust that you don’t need a person in it.”
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Levinson went further and specifically pointed to Tesla’s decision to rely solely on cameras to support its driver assistance system. “Our perspective is you really do need significantly more hardware than Tesla is putting in their vehicles to build a robotaxi that is not just as safe, but as especially safer than a human,” he said.
Levinson’s comments come just a few weeks after Musk revealed the prototype of Tesla’s so-called “Cybercab” robotaxi. Musk also announced at the Cybercab event that Tesla wants to start allowing Model 3 sedans and Model Y SUVs to operate as robotaxis in California and Texas by the end of 2025.
Levinson said he uses Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) software “every couple of weeks.” And while he called it “impressive,” he also said he finds it “a bit stressful.”
“Usually it does the right thing, and then it sort of lulls you into this false sense of complacency, and then it does the wrong thing,” he said. ‘You’re like, Oh, my God!’”
Levinson went on to say he believes FSD is “about 100 times less safe than a human if you look at all the metrics that are publicly available.” (Tesla releases quarterly safety reports that claim its driver-assistance gets into fewer crashes than cars without it — though these self-reported statistics have been criticized as being selective.)
The comments about Tesla came as Levinson announced Zoox is launching its custom-built robotaxi in San Francisco and Las Vegas markets in the coming weeks. The company plans to make them available to an early-rider program in 2025.
Tesla is testing a robotaxi service that Elon Musk claims will launch next year
Elon Musk said he hopes to launch a service that will let people hail self-driving Tesla vehicles in California and Texas sometime in 2025 — and claims his company has already been testing the service in the Bay Area with employees.
The comments, made Wednesday on Tesla’s third-quarter earnings call, go farther than what Musk promised two weeks ago at its Cybercab unveiling event. On that stage, Musk promised that Model 3 and Model Y owners would be able to use an “unsupervised” version of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving software in California and Texas. But he made no mention of the ride-hailing network, despite Tesla having teased the idea for years.
It’s unclear if Tesla would be required to get permission from California’s Department of Motor Vehicles to conduct the tests Musk said his company is already performing. The DMV did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
David Lau, Tesla’s VP of software engineering, said on the call that the cars employees have been hailing have had safety drivers at the wheel. And to be clear, no Tesla vehicles can currently drive themselves without human intervention.
Today, Tesla’s Full Self-Driving software, or FSD, is considered an advanced driver assistance system — not a self-driving system like the one Waymo uses in its robotaxis. FSD offers some automated features that are available on highways and city streets, however the system still requires the driver to pay attention and take control.
Musk said on the call that Tesla would go through the proper regulatory approval process in California before opening such a service to everyday consumers, though he lamented the red tape and said he expects smoother process in his home state of Texas. The regulatory process in California to launch a commercial robotaxi service has multiple tiers that require approval from the DMV and the California Public Utilities Commission. Waymo is the only company currently allowed to operate a commercial drvierless robotaxi service in San Francisco.
Musk also opined that Tesla might launch the service in other states by the end of next year, too.
These claims come after years of Musk overpromising on Tesla’s ability to develop software that can autonomously drive cars. He originally promised in 2016 in a since-deleted post on Tesla’s website that “All Tesla Cars Being Produced Now Have Full Self-Driving Hardware,” and in the following years made it seem that it would only take the flip of a switch to fill the streets with self-driving cars.
Even the hardware part of that promise has not borne out.