I get annoyed with statements like this because technology changes and advances so quickly, and Tesla has made substantial technical leaps in this field of machine learning. They have the state-of-the-art vision -> voxels/depth models and are only improving.
Waymo, who use additional sensors like lidar, have a driverless taxi service which needs no safety drivers.
The evidence kinda speaks for itself, IMHO.
[1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1740641473849352450?s=20
> Tesla, who use cameras only, have not demonstrated full self driving
There are entire youtube channels with hours of continuous video showing Teslas driving around SF, but also other parts of California, with no human intervention.
Waymo is geofenced, but within its geofence it requires zero human intervention. Tesla on the other hand is famous for mistaking the moon for a traffic light. Saying "Tesla has so many miles on YouTube" is hilarious because first of all there are channels with lots of Cruise & Waymo footage too, and more importantly it's not the # of miles that matters, but the # of non-trivial scenarios you can handle.
Btw Waymo is nowhere near achieving unit economics. Their cars cost like 5 times what Teslas cost, and the sensors require a lot of upkeep and maintenance.
It's probably not accurate to say that the remote operator is "steering" though. It's more like pathfinding.
<photo of construction zone> Can I drive through here? [Yes] [No]
When this is happening, the car is stopped and lets the passenger know that it’s reaching out for remote help to figure out what to do. For me this has happened two times across my 125 Waymo rides (571 miles) so far, and was resolved in under 20 seconds. Though I must say, 20 seconds feels like ages when you’re in the car and blocking traffic!