Car

Tesla’s FSD bashed by Zoox executive ahead of robotaxi rollout

An executive from Zoox has shared some choice words for Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) software, just as the Amazon-owned company starts rolling out its first driverless ride-hailing vehicles in two U.S. cities.

During an interview at the Tech Crunch Disrupt conference on Wednesday, Zoox co-founder and CTO Jesse Levinson cast doubt on Tesla’s recent claims that Unsupervised FSD could be seen in some of the company’s vehicles as soon as next year. Levenson claimed that Tesla doesn’t currently “have technology that works” when asked if regulatory or technology issues were the larger problem in the company’s path to robotaxi deployment.

“The more fundamental issue is they don’t have technology that works,” Levinson said of Tesla’s FSD. “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.”

The executive also highlighted that he doesn’t think Tesla’s camera-based FSD doesn’t have enough equipment to properly keep people safe, saying that it can “lull you into this false sense of complacency” before actually going on to do the wrong thing.

“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,” Levinson adds.

Elon Musk followed up with a response to the story, highlighting the fact that Zoox wouldn’t exist today if it weren’t for Amazon bailing them out.

You can watch the full interview with Levinson below, with the question about Tesla’s FSD taking place a little after 21 minutes.

Tesla’s FSD Supervised, Cybercab, and competition

Earlier this month, Tesla held its “We, Robot” event to unveil the two-seater fully autonomous Cybercab platform, which it expects to begin mass producing before 2027. Teslarati was among those at the event, and among the first to take a ride in the Cybercab, coverage of which you can see on X here.

While Tesla owners can already use FSD Supervised by either paying a monthly subscription or purchasing the software along with their vehicle, the company has yet to roll out a ride-hailing service for vehicle owners, or a completely unsupervised offering of the software. Tesla said during the event that Model 3 and Model Y owners will get access to Unsupervised FSD in California and Texas by next year, before rolling the software out to the Cybertruck, Model S, and Model X shortly thereafter.

Alphabet-owned Waymo has already started deploying driverless ride-hailing vehicles in San Francisco and Los Angeles, and Zoox also announced this month its plans to deploy completely driverless robotaxis in San Francisco and Las Vegas. Meanwhile, General Motors-owned (GM-owned) self-driving company Cruise is attempting to re-launch paid rides, after facing legal troubles and staff shake-ups following an accident with a pedestrian last October.

Still, Tesla has constantly said that its technology will be more scalable than those of other companies, due to the software being trained by the many drivers who use it in their own cars. The company has also touted its software’s neural network being trained on vast amounts of real-world driving footage, rather than with specific commands in a geofenced area of operation, which it claims makes it able to better handle fringe scenarios.

Related Posts

Tesla Model S Plaid outfitted for police use in latest UP.FIT release

Tesla’s electric vehicles (EVs) have been rolling out as police cruisers over the past few years, though the company’s Model S Plaid has only recently received its first…

Tesla App Adds Visual Interface for Selecting Areas That Need Attention

Tesla App Adds Visual Interface for Selecting Areas That Need Attention As part of a recent update to the Tesla App, Tesla has added some slick new user…

Tesla Roadster details get another cryptic walkaround with no end in sight

Tesla Roadster details were among the sought-after questions during the company’s Earnings Call on Wednesday night, but they were once again given a cryptic walkaround by CEO Elon…

Tesla improves cold-weather Supercharging performance in latest software update

Tesla is aiming to improve Supercharging performance for its electric vehicles in its latest software update, making life easier for owners, especially in colder climates. Cold weather and…

Tesla’s new 2024.20 software update starts rolling out HVAC, headlight, gaming improvements

Tesla has started rolling out Software Version 2024.20, which features several improvements to the adaptive headlights, among plenty of other things. Last week, we reported the changes in…

Tesla Autopilot suggests that dogs are now recognized as pedestrian objects

It appears that Teslas are getting better and better at recognizing objects that are encountered in everyday inner-city driving. According to recent reports, for example, Autopilot appears to…

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *