Tesla’s Approach to Autonomy: 7x Safer and 7x Cheaper than Waymo

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If autonomy is a data and AI compute problem as Musk says that may change your math given Waymo is part of Google.

The data is pretty meaningless since the waymo and Tesla definitions of accidents differ. Tesla is only counting airbag deployments or pretensioner engagements while waymo's definition is much more broad. I'd take this data with large grains of salt.

I think that comparing the safety of different autonomy levels is kinda weird. Like Tesla is safer but it's also always supervised by a human. I'm sure that if waymo was a level 2 system it would be safer but then waymo also wouldn't exist. Waymo also uses substantially broader definitions of an accident so the rate is probably not as dramatic as what they're claiming.

One of them is driving real rides without drivers and the other one isn’t so…

Take it with a grain of salt. Comes from a blog / X account that is biased to Tesla.

Bloomberg?

The only autonomous vehicle fleet in operation that actually posted it's safety data was Waymo.

> pretensioner engagements That is pretty broad is it not? I activate the pretensioners at least once a week. Never been in a collision with my Tesla. FYI hard acceleration activates them. As does high g cornering. Don't even need to get the tires chirping on lose traction to get the pretensioners activated. When you accelerate hard, and feel the seat belt tighten? That is the pretensioner. Any event <5 seconds after FSD was driving is logged in the data. So, when I give it acceleration around a corner, that is a logged event.

The pretensioner is pyrotechnic activated. It cannot be triggered repeatedly without physically replacing it. It's basically a small charge of gunpowder that releases gas that moves a piston. You're probably thinking of a regular seatbelt lockup.

No, you cannot repeatedly activate a pretensioner. Those are only activated like an air bag, in the event of a crash.

There are actually two stages. One is driven by the vision system, and it tightens the seatbelt before an accident. Seconds stage is the pyrotechnic.