The ‘godfather’ of driverless cars says Tesla has a major advantage in the self-driving race

• Anthony Levandowski, who co-founded Google’s Waymo, says Tesla has a huge advantage in data.
• “I’d rather be in the Tesla’s shoes than in the Waymo’s shoes,” Levandowski told Business Insider.
• Google could stay ahead by cutting the cost of its tech and maybe buying a car company, he said.

Tesla and Elon Musk have an incredibly strong position in autonomous vehicles right now, and could even be ahead of Waymo in some crucial ways, according to a key figure in the driverless car industry.

“I’d rather be in Tesla’s shoes than in Waymo’s shoes,” Anthony Levandowski told Business Insider in an interview.

Levandowski is the engineer who co-founded Google’s self-driving program in 2009 — then named Project Chauffeur, now called Waymo — and is considered a pioneer of the autonomous vehicle industry.

Levandowski is bullish on Tesla’s overall position because of one key element: data. Tesla already has cars on the road, some of which use semi-autonomous features for tasks such as parking and lane-switching — and learning all the while. Musk has “the greatest fleet to do this,” he said.

“There’s millions of Teslas out there that are constantly alerting, feeding back their data to Tesla to make the product better, and that’s ultimately what’s really going to be the differentiator here — that you have the richest, most consistent data to continuously improve over time,” Levandowski said.

“I would say the Tesla has examples of maybe 10,000 or maybe a million times more data than Waymo does in terms of all other scenarios of driving,” he added.

The unveiling of Tesla’s “Cybercab” last week had been a long time coming. Musk has promised self-driving Teslas for the better part of a decade. Still, investors and Wall Street analysts weren’t blown away. Tesla’s stock tumbled after the event, wiping $15 billion from Musk’s net worth. The CEO’s history of overpromising on timelines may have something to do with that.

Likewise, Levandowski said he hoped for “a little more steak and less sizzle” on the substance of Tesla’s self-driving technology. Musk left many unanswered questions about how the technology works and its safety.

Levandowski has a checkered past in this industry. After he left Google for Uber in 2016, his former employer sued his new bosses, claiming Levandowski had stolen intellectual property that would benefit Uber. Levandowski was subsequently fired by Uber and later sentenced to 18 months in prison—before being saved by a presidential pardon from former president Donald Trump.

Yet perhaps few people understand the nitty-gritty of self-driving tech better than Levandowski. Two years ago, he struck a more dour tone about the industry, accusing all the key players of offering nothing but glorified tech demos.

His shift in tone now may progress with his new self-driving venture Pronto, which focuses on the trucking and mining industries. He also acknowledged that the accelerated progress of AI in the last couple of years has had significant downstream effects on the self-driving industry.

“That’s effectively where I think a lot of this progress that you’re starting to see again in self-driving is really coming from,” Levandowski said.

“We couldn’t do what we do today at Pronto without some of this new foundational work that’s happened,” he added.

Tesla’s advantage

Musk has previously claimed that Tesla outpaced rivals in offering a “general solution” to self-driving that would work anywhere.

Indeed, the Cybercab relies solely on cameras and AI. Waymo and some other players in this industry use additional lidar sensors, which map a 3D image of the car’s surroundings. Still, lidar technology is expensive, and Musk, who previously called it “a crutch,” is betting on a future without it.

Levandowski agrees.

“There’s no reason why Waymo can’t drop their lasers later on,” he said. “In fact, I think that they will.”

That leaves a big question about how Waymo, which Levandowski previously worked on, will catch up. Right now, Google pays a premium for each Waymo car, and building and maintaining a massive ride-hailing network of its own would be capital-intensive.

“You probably need to buy a car company to be able to produce the cars that you want,” said Levandowski regarding Waymo. “You should probably only do that at the time that you really have your technology ready to scale.”

Uber’s advantage

While Tesla and Waymo compete for tech supremacy, Uber might be the frontrunner in the robotaxi race right now.

Since selling off its self-driving division in 2020, Uber has focused on partnering with self-driving companies to make their vehicles available to customers. It partners with Waymo and also recently signed deals with Wayve and General Motors’ Cruise.

It’s a low-capital model for Uber, which relies on a network of drivers and riders that dynamically shifts with demand. Uber can simply offer driverless vehicles to customers through the same app without spending anything to build them. No wonder Uber and Lyft shares traded higher after the Tesla robotaxi event.

Analysts also see Uber as a big winner in self-driving taxis, at least in the near term, and how Waymo commercializes is still unclear.

“Where they go from here is an interesting question,” said Levandowski.

Of course, Google has a massive scale with several of its existing products, and Levandowski said there’s no reason the company couldn’t one day give people the option to call a Waymo from within Google Maps, an app used by more than 1 billion people every month.

In an August interview with a16z, Waymo co-CEO Dmitri Dolgov said the company was considering go-to-market strategies beyond ride-hailing, from deliveries to trucking.

If Google wants to own the market, it may need to spin Waymo out into an entity that can take a hit on its return on investment as it gets to scale, Stratechery founder Ben Thompson recently wrote.

“More generally, the longer that Waymo stays an Alphabet subsidiary, the greater the likelihood is that Uber wins as a transportation Aggregator,” Thompson wrote. That, or as Levandowki suggests, it cuts costs or buys a car manufacturer to do the hard work.

“Whether [Tesla] can execute on the software and the technology becomes ready in time, or Waymo’s costs come way down on the per-vehicle basis, who knows?” Levandowki said.

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