The robotaxi race is speeding up.
Tesla is preparing to debut its autonomous ride-hailing service in Austin next month, and Alphabet's Waymo continues to expand throughout major US cities.
Under the hood of the Tesla and Waymo robotaxis are two key pieces of technology that the companies respectively call Full Self-Driving (FSD) and the Waymo Driver.
We (Business Insider's Lloyd Lee and Alistair Barr) tested both of these AI-powered drivers in San Francisco — and the results truly surprised us.
Given the positive experiences we've had with Waymo and Tesla's FSD, we expected the results of our not-so-scientific test to come down to minute details — maybe by how many times the AI-driver would hesitate or if it would make a curious lane change for no apparent reason.
That didn't happen. Instead, the Tesla made an egregious error that handed Waymo the clear win.
Here's how it went down.
The test
Our vehicles for the test included Waymo's Jaguar I-PACE SUVs and Barr's personal 2024 Tesla Model 3.
The Waymo robotaxis are equipped with the company's fifth-generation Waymo Driver and guided by five lidar sensors, six radars, and 29 cameras.
Barr's Tesla was equipped with Hardware 4 and FSD Supervised software v13.2.8. Tesla released a minor update to the software days after this test was conducted. The vehicle has eight external cameras.
It should be noted that this is not the same software Tesla plans to use in the robotaxis set to roll out this summer. The company said it plans to release FSD Unsupervised, a self-driving system that will not require a human behind the wheel. Nevertheless, we wanted to see how far Tesla's FSD had come since its beta rollout in 2020.
We couldn't compare Tesla and Waymo as a full-package robotaxi service. Tesla has yet to launch that product, so we focused only on the driving experience.
We started at San Francisco's iconic Twin Peaks viewpoint and ended at Chase Center. Depending on the route, that's about a 4- to 7-mile ride.
We chose these destinations for two reasons. One, it would take the cars through winding roads and both suburban and city landscapes. And two, there were a few ways to get to Chase Center from Twin Peaks, including the 280 highway.
Waymo's robotaxis can't take riders on the highway yet. Tesla can.
According to Google Maps, the highway is more time-efficient. For the Tesla, we went with the route the vehicle highlighted first. It pointed out the highway on the way back to Twin Peaks.
We took a Waymo around 8:30 a.m. on a Thursday and the Tesla afterward at around 10 a.m. The traffic conditions for both rides were light to moderate and not noticeably different.
Predictions
Our prediction was that the AI drivers' skills would be nearly neck-and-neck.
But in the spirit of competition, Lee predicted Waymo would deliver a smoother experience and a smarter driver, given the high-tech sensor stack the company relies on.
Barr went with Tesla. He said he'd driven hundreds of miles on FSD with two or three relatively minor interventions so far, and given this previous experience, Barr said he'd have no problem riding in the back seat of a Tesla robotaxi.
Waymo
Throughout our ride in the Waymo, we were impressed by the AI driver's ability to be safe but assertive.
The Waymo was not shy about making yellow lights, for example, but it never made maneuvers you wouldn't want a robot driver you're entrusting your life with to make.
One small but notable moment in our ride was when the Waymo stopped behind a car at a stop sign. To the right of us was an open lane.
For whatever reason, the Waymo saw that and decided to switch lanes, as if it was tired of waiting behind the other car. We found that a bit amusing because it seemed like such a human moment.
As human drivers, we might make choices like that because we get antsy waiting behind another car, even though we're not shaving more than a few seconds, if any, off of our commute.
Barr noted that the Waymo Driver can have moments of sass or attitude. It had an urgency, giving us the feeling that it somehow really cared that we got to the Chase Center in good time.
"It's got New York cab driver energy," Barr said, stealing a line from BI editor in chief Jamie Heller, who also took a Waymo during a trip to San Francisco earlier this year.
Sandy Karp, a spokesperson for Waymo, said the company doesn't have specific details on what happened in that moment but said that the Waymo Driver "is constantly planning its next move, including the optimal route to get its rider where they're going safely and efficiently."
"This planning can involve decisions like changing lanes when deemed favorable," she said.
Ultimately, though, the best litmus test for any robotaxi is when you stop noticing that you're in a robotaxi.
Outside those small but notable moments, we recorded footage for this story and chatted in comfort without feeling like we were on the edge of our seats.
Tesla
Tesla's FSD delivered a mostly smooth driving experience, and we think it deserves some props for doing so with a smaller and cheaper tech stack, i.e., only eight cameras.
FSD knew how to signal a lane change as it approached a large stalled vehicle taking up a lot of road room, and it didn't have any sudden moments of braking. Just a few years ago, Tesla owners were reporting issues of "phantom braking." We experienced none of that on our drive.
Tesla also handled highway driving flawlessly. Sure, the weather was clear and traffic was fairly light, but, as noted earlier, Waymo does not yet offer public rides on highways. The company is still testing.
However, Tesla FSD did make a few mistakes, including one critical error.
At the end of our drive at Chase Center, we assessed how Waymo and Tesla's systems performed. We both gave Waymo a slight edge, but were also impressed with the FSD system.
On our way back to Twin Peaks, Tesla highlighted a route that would take us on the highway — a route that Waymo cannot take. We kept Tesla FSD on for this trip while we continued recording.
San Francisco is known to have a lot of brightly marked, green bike lanes for cyclists. There was one moment during the trip back when the Tesla made a right turn onto a bike lane and continued to drive on it for a few seconds before it merged into the proper lane.
Then, as we approached the last half-mile of our ride, the Tesla, for an unknown reason, ran a red light.
The incident occurred at a fairly complex intersection that resembles a slip-lane intersection, but with a traffic light. The Waymo did not approach this intersection since it took a different route to get back to Twin Peaks.
The Tesla's console screen showed how the car detected the red light and came to a dutiful stop. Then, despite the traffic light not changing, the Tesla drove ahead.
We didn't come close to hitting any cars or humans on the street — Tesla's FSD is good at spotting such risks, and the main source of traffic coming across our path had been stopped by another traffic light. However, the vehicle slowly drove through this red light, which left us both somewhat shocked at the time.
Some Tesla drivers appeared to have reported similar issues in online forums and in videos that showed the vehicle recognizing the red light but driving ahead. One YouTuber showed how the Tesla first came to a stop at a red light and then continued driving before the light changed.
It's unclear how common this issue is. Tesla hasn't publicly addressed the problem.
A spokesperson for Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.
At this point, we thought the winner was clear.
Verdict
Since Tesla's FSD made a critical error that would have landed an automatic fail during a driver's license test, we thought it was fair to give Waymo the win for this test.
The Tesla handled San Francisco's hilly and winding roads almost as flawlessly as Waymo.
We also think FSD's ability to handle routes that Waymo can't handle for now — in particular, the highway — would give Tesla a major upper hand.
In addition, when Lee tried on a different day to make the Waymo go through the same intersection where the Tesla blew the red light, the Waymo app appeared to do everything it could to avoid that intersection, even if it provided the quickest path to get to the destination, according to Google Maps.
A Waymo spokesperson did not provide a comment on what could've happened here.
Still, an error like running a red light cannot be overlooked when human lives are at stake. Consider that when Tesla rolls out its robotaxi service, a human driver will not be behind the wheel to quickly intervene if it makes an error.
For Tesla and Waymo, we expected to be on the lookout for small, almost negligible, mistakes or glitchy moments from the AI driver. We did not anticipate an error as glaring as running a red light.
Once Tesla launches its robotaxi service in more areas, we'll have to see how the pick-up and drop-off times compare.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that the company's generalized solution to self-driving is far superior to its competitors. The company has millions of cars already on the roads collecting massive amounts of real-world data. According to Musk, this will make FSD smarter and able to operate with only cameras.
With Tesla's robotaxi service set to launch in June with human passengers, we certainly hope so.
