Tesla Inc.’s TSLA former head of AI, Andrej Karpathy, thinks that tech companies still haven’t solved autonomous driving.
What Happened: Karpathy, speaking at last week’s Y Combinator event, explained that achieving fully autonomous driving may not be as easy as it seems.
Karpathy shared an anecdote of his experience with autonomous driving in 2013 with Alphabet Inc.’s GOOGL GOOG Waymo. “We got into this car and we went for an about 30-minute drive around Palo Alto, highways, streets and so on, and that drive was perfect,” he said.
He highlighted how he thought that the autonomous driving sector was about to be solved, but more than a decade later, companies are still working on perfecting the technology, as Waymo still uses teleoperators, Karpathy said.
Why It Matters: The comments come in as Elon Musk’s EV giant has officially rolled out the Robotaxi service in Austin in an invite-only event to demonstrate the company’s autonomous driving prowess.
Robotaxis could prove to be a crucial element to Tesla’s business, with experts like Future Fund LLC’s managing director Gary Black reiterating the importance of the service to Tesla’s future.
However, as Tesla’s Austin rollout begins, the company will look to catch up to Waymo, which already operates in multiple cities across the U.S. in Arizona, California and Texas.
What could be a boost to Tesla is the cost of AVs or autonomous vehicles, which data suggests is 1/7 that of Waymo’s fleet. The data also suggested Tesla has over 3 billion miles worth of data to work with, compared to Waymo’s 22 million miles.
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