EDIT: Sorry, and to clarify, I meant "not a player in self-driving research. I also do not think anyone has any vehicles we should call "self driving".
(I'll keep the rest of my pre-edit clarification below.)
To clarify further:
Tesla's offerings come from applying and engineering existing published research. That takes work, and they're making some money from that.
To the extent that "fully self driving" is an achievable goal, it makes no sense to expect Tesla to make the advances that get us there, when (1) they aren't doing that, and (2) they don't need to do that to make money.
To make this even more clear, let's make it concrete with one plausible future: In 2032, Waymo (or Didi, whoever) achieves true 'level 4' fully-self driving with proprietary technology. Their tech is seen in trucks, busses, taxis, as well as being equipped to a few thousand private vehicles. The safety stats are superhuman, and insuring such a vehicle is cheap.
In this future, Tesla Motors would like to enter into an exclusive partnership to integrate this technology into the cars they manufacture.
Google has tried and failed at commercializing similar technology in other verticals (like building environmental automation from their DC tech). The reason is actual incumbents (rightly) see the value of their position while Google comes at it as “our AI is the value, you just make dumb things”.
I expect the automakers to ship mediocre stacks that are put together by existing players like Bosch.
As an ex-Googler I would be floored if Waymo actually lands a sell-into deal with an automaker. A fully vertical taxi service is their path today because they tried and failed to sign any partnerships.
august 2020, tesla friendly blog: "Waymo Has Partnerships With Fiat Chrysler, Jaguar, Nissan, Renault, Volvo, & Magna"
https://cleantechnica.com/2020/08/10/waymo-has-partnerships-...
I see no possibility where existing large automakers will let Google (Waymo) own the FSD stack (and thus own the data and huge piece of value chain) and be relegated to a mere maker of a dumb car.
And if GM is not going to buy Waymo tech, Tesla will definitely not.
So, I still have difficulty reading your comment and extracting a meaningful point from it. Any reply to you would be regurgitating things that have already been said.
More importantly, I've been trying to interpret your comments as made in good faith, but I don't think you're arguing with the contiguity of the thread in mind. It really seems like you're here to defend Tesla, and that "Tesla might buy Waymo tech" might sound like an insult to Tesla? (To this extent, I'm worried this might actually be another proxy Musk argument, which I really have no interest in.)
With all this, out of courtesy, I don't get HN notifications and I won't be navigating back to this comment thread to check for further replies.
R&D for commercialization is a very difficult and very profitable task! But one would not expect this to advance the field of autonomous vehicles, nor would it require participating in the research.
(Also, I thought Waymo had partnerships, but I'm not close to Google. I don't know a lot about Waymo as a business, only as a research entity.)
A huge amount of R&D is never published. Eg: lithography tech at ASML.
Technically speaking: yes, they were the first ones, back in 2017.
Their car might've been more likely to crash then actually end up at the desired destination, but they did release first with a pretty hilariously bad product.
> I don't consider Tesla a player in self-driving, but I don't think Tesla does either
I think that's the distinction driving the confusion here.
They doesn't necessarily mean that they themselves believe their own marketing.