Hacker News Reader

Comment by GMoromisato | Hacker News Reader

I think this article is underestimating Tesla and very much underestimating how hard Level 4 autonomy is. The long-tail of edge conditions to handle is really long, and Rivian is only at the beginning.

What Rivian is going to release at the end of 2026 is what Tesla had 3 years ago. All that time has gone to dealing with edge conditions: bike lanes, emergency vehicles, construction zones, and all the crazy one-off situations that their fleet has seen.

Tesla's fleet is an order of magnitude larger, so events that Rivian has seen only once, Tesla already has ten examples of. And rare events that Tesla has trained on, Rivian has never yet seen.

I will say this, though: Rivian is the closest competitor to Tesla (not counting Chinese cars). Waymo FSD is obviously more advanced than Tesla, but they will lose out to both Tesla and Rivian when it comes to manufacturing. And the robotaxi game is going to be all about manufacturing.

View on HN

> Waymo FSD is obviously more advanced than Tesla, but they will lose out to both Tesla and Rivian when it comes to manufacturing

Maybe I misunderstand what you mean but the car itself (chassis, bodywork, drivetrain) is a commodity today. If you can turn any car into an autonomous car then the car isn't worth that much in the self-driving game. Tesla's stock is propped by the promise of becoming the first to achieve autonomy not by its ability to build cars, or else VW and Toyota would be worth multiples of Tesla. They aren't because cars are a commodity. Autonomous car brains are the hot deal.

If manufacturing ever became Google's Achilles heel, they can take a majority stake in something like VinFast and manufacture a Google car.

It's like saying Linux will lose out to Microsoft when it comes to manufacturing. Yes, they do lose out by not manufacturing anything and yet their product is slowly taking over the market. Local loss (no profit from manufacturing), global win (core product is increasing market share).

There are two factors to Teslas overvaluation I think. The first one is as you stated but the second one is the promise of humanoid robotics.

> If manufacturing ever became Google's Achilles heel, they can take a majority stake in something like VinFast and manufacture a Google car.

They won't even have to (partially) buy any manufacturer - they can utilize contract manufacturers like Magna Steyr (which made the Jaguar I-Pace) or Foxconn, or lean on/expand partnerships like the one they have with Toyota.

I said that on the assumption that they want control and guarantees that Google's needs get serviced. Otherwise they can partner with any manufacturer to incorporate the tech, like they do on the software side. But they could be dropped at any time.

touché

All of Waymo's vehicles are fitted with the Waymo driver hardware by a contract manufacturer who builds low volume car models for several big brands.

I control+f'd LiDAR and got hits confirming they're using it, which means it's already better than anything Tesla is capable of offering

They seem to be getting pretty far with only vision, to be fair. Same with openpilot. Still, I cant help but agree. If you have access to beyond-human sensors and are able to do sensor fusion, then please do it. What's the point otherwise? saving a few hundred bucks per car?

Waymo uses lidar, radar, cameras, mics, and other sensors. They also have extra extraordinary geospatial data. And they have years of operational experience.

They also spend $1 billion a year on R&D. while they are probably at least break even on opex, they are continuing to invest.

There is no shortcut. The reason they have all of those sensors, and the tiny windshield wipers that keep them clean, is that they need them to make it work. They are on version 6 of their hardware. If it were possible to remove some of the sensors and retain the same level of safety, they would.

> The long-tail of edge conditions to handle is really long, and Rivian is only at the beginning.

I still find it insane that the entire established automotive industry saw what Tesla was doing with cameras and incrementally working toward FSD, and still to this day has not even started to collect data (or even install enough instruments to collect the data!) to get onto the same trajectory. Meanwhile the Model Y is the best selling car in the world multiple years in a row.

Waymo is first to market by retrofitting a bunch of Jaguars nobody else would buy. They can keep that arbitrage up for a while.

Conveniently the same CM builds the Jaguar SUVs and fits Waymo hardware to vehicles.

They've already started using other models, both ioniq 5s and I think Zeekrs.

I agree that Waymo doesn't need to ramp up manufacturing themselves until they really start hitting walls with vehicle makers, or want tighter integration with the vehicle.

Can you elaborate why robotaxi success will hinge on manufacturing?

Because once the software gets to an acceptable level, it becomes table-stakes--it's not a differentiator. After that, the only thing that matters is who deploys the most cars, and the unit economics of each car.

That depends on manufacturing (e.g., low unit costs, and high throughput).

Zeekr can surely outbuild and undercut any US firm by a wide margin.

But they won’t compete here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waymo_Ojai

Are you sure about that? Google is probably one Trump bribe away from being tariff exempt for these.

Waymo doesn’t go on highway. Which makes it a glorified golf cart. You need a human to supervise on highway like tesla allows.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com