I'm the first to complain about Tesla overselling their self-driving abilities, but I think the numbers used in this article are misleading. Miles per disengagements comparisons between Waymo (to pick one) and Tesla is like apples to oranges. Waymo operates in a closed fashion, is a laboratory-like setting (1), and I don't believe for one second that their miles per disengagements would be significantly better than Tesla in the real-world open settings that Tesla's FSD is being tested in. These numbers mean nothing when the environments used to compute them are so vastly different.
(1) Here's what I think is the case for Waymo's operations:
- Phenix AZ only (maybe one more city?)
-- Amazing sunny weather
-- Clear line markings
-- Can overfit to said city with HD maps, handcoding road quirks, etc
- Waymo employees only
-- Not to sound to tinfoil-hat, can we really trust this data
- Even within Phenix, some filtering will happen as to which route are possible
(1) Here's what I think is the case for Waymo's operations: - Phenix AZ only (maybe one more city?) -- Amazing sunny weather -- Clear line markings -- Can overfit to said city with HD maps, handcoding road quirks, etc - Waymo employees only -- Not to sound to tinfoil-hat, can we really trust this data - Even within Phenix, some filtering will happen as to which route are possible