I Took a Tesla Robotaxi and a Waymo - Here’s How They Compare
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Alright, it's day two and here's my first robo taxi ride of the day. Yesterday I did about five rides. So today I'm going to do a few rides. Here is the car and basically here's the safety monitor. Then there I'm going to go ahead open the car. How you doing? Hey, thanks. Good. We know the drill to start the ride and we are off.

So we are in South Austin right now. Sprouts supermarket and we are gonna go to Merritt Coffee in South Austin. Yeah I'm assuming it's a lot less busy today. Most people have gone home so I should be getting some faster rides today than yesterday.

Alright, so we're in the middle of this first ride here. We've got about seven more minutes and because this is the early early Tesla Robotaxi launch, we've got to try out all the features here. So I'm just gonna go ahead and they give me this feature so I'm gonna use it. It says pull over. Now I pressed this button yesterday. I was scared to press confirm but I've slept on it. I'm much more confident now.

in this robotaxi so here it goes pull over wait the vehicle reached out to us so it actually reaches out to a support agent for assistance so it's probably gonna just he's probably gonna ask me why do I want to pull over and then I don't really have a good reason so I'll just cancel out I guess okay

Alright, I'm back. We're about five minutes in. You know, I'm just gonna try it out. What the heck. Pullover. I'm just gonna confirm it. If I get a support agent, that's fine. I'm just gonna say I want to be dropped off. Huh. Yeah, everything's fine. Just wanted to end my ride a little early and walk around this area.

Okay, sounds good. So once the car pulls over here, you would like your ride to be completed? Yes, that's correct. Okay, sounds like a plan. Okay, great. Thanks a lot. Appreciate it. So I can resume, right? And connected to transportation, okay. So it looks like the car is going to try to pull me over and park somewhere now that I...

and I asked it to pull over so we'll see okay I'm gonna go ahead and pull you over here okay thanks all right I'm pulled over vehicle stopped your ride will end once you exit okay so I could just I'm just gonna unbuckle and get out okay thank you yes have a great day thank you

Alright, we'll see you. Alright, bye. Alright, so there you have it. I tried the pull over function of the Tesla Robotaxi. Very, very interesting. Talked to a support agent and then asked him to just pull over the car. And yeah, it seems like he had some control over like, you know, being able to pull over the car or at least tell the car to pull over. Very, very interesting. Alright, so I called my second Robotaxi and I'm just going to go ahead and enter this side.

First time going in on this side, I've been always on the other side so How's it going? Welcome to Tesla Love Factory Thank you You don't mind showing me just your after-party? Yeah sure Alright, press start Off we go Alright, we're wrapping up our second ride here for the day Gonna go to Merritt Coffee in South Austin here There it is on the left side Ah, interesting

So it dropped me off a little closer and now it's actually going to do this interesting maneuver here to try to get out of this parking lot. It's possible to go around but they're actually going to go through here. It's interesting. I guess they're doing a multi-point turn. Yeah, the multi-point turn thing is interesting. It seems like a pretty advanced maneuver but I guess they're able to do that in parking lots.

Now here's an interesting situation. We've got one car that can't get through and Robotaxi is, yeah, a nice move letting this other car get through. Okay, not bad. And Robotaxi is off. Very, yeah, sophisticated drop off and exit of the parking lot. Well done. All right, here's my third Robotaxi. This has no side stickers, but I think it actually has a rear sticker only. All right, let's check it out.

Start right... Okay, this is a little bit of a tricky parking lot to get out of. Very very tight right here. You can barely fit. It's like, I don't know what I would do. Yeah, barely fits. Maybe like we're talking about a couple inches. I mean there's literally a car just parked on the side but half of it's sticking out. Wow, very impressive. RoboTaxi makes it with like a couple, two inches to spare. Yeah, this is a tough one.

Okay, so on this ride we're gonna go from Merritt Coffee to Terry Black's which is a pretty popular barbecue place here in Austin and I've heard that Terry Black's parking lot is pretty challenging so we're gonna see what it's like. It's a quick ride, just a few more minutes till we get there. Yeah, we're almost there actually. Okay, here we are. Terry Black's, we need to...

So I'm gonna get into these get between these cones into this parking lot. Well done by Tesla Robotaxi. Actually the parking lot's not too busy right now even though it's uh yeah it's actually 2:30 actually in that room that's why a little bit past lunch time. Not bad at all, not bad at all. Okay that was a third ride today. Tesla Robotaxi did a good job here at Terry Black's BBQ in Austin, Texas.

Alright so I took a break about 15 minutes and then I called another my fourth robo taxi. Interesting there's this guy kind of taking his time parking here so then robo taxi I noticed it's blinking so I can go ahead and ride the car like this. Let's check it out.

Alright, so we are in our fourth robo taxi of the day. Interesting, there's a car. This car is having a hard time parking in that small parking spot here at Terry Black's. I mean, it's the tiniest parking spot. He's got this huge car and we're all just confused here so...

Yeah, I would let the... Yeah, that black car needs to get out somehow. Oh, the black car is going to try parking there, okay? But the black car is so big, it'll have to reverse. So the car is reversing and it's made it kind of... It's still parking but I guess Robotaxi just went around it, which is not bad. It's better than just waiting for like forever for that car to try to park because that car was trying to park for like five minutes already. So we're off.

to South Congress. It's actually only four minutes away. Actually, not bad. So this geofenced area by Tesla

I'm actually pretty impressed. I thought it would be a smaller area initially that they would roll out to and I thought they would have to go through every single intersection, make sure that there's no tricky things going on. But then this geofence area is quite large. It's a little bit south, just across the river from downtown Austin and it's quite large. It takes, I would say 20-25 minutes to go from one side to the other.

left to right, up and down maybe about 10, 15 minutes or so in a car. So it's a decent sized area. I think it's a good size for robo taxis to get anywhere if it gets called within that area. And so within 15 minutes or so, I've noticed the wait times today, this is day two, range between five and 10 minutes or so, occasionally longer, but

sometimes shorter so it's you know it's hit or miss depending on where an empty robo taxi is at that moment all right we're almost at our destination here about one minute left so it's on our left side so we're gonna make a left turn up here okay so we got a flashing yellow signal light that means we can go and now i'm gonna be dropped off on the right side i think

Alright, so we got dropped off here in South Congress. Yeah, another perfect robo taxi ride. This is the fourth of today and I did five yesterday so after nine rides there's been no mistakes, no nothing. Pretty impressive stuff.

Alright so after 4 rides today and 5 perfect robo-taxi rides yesterday I'm gonna try a Waymo right now I'm gonna go from here to Merak Coffee which is about 10 minutes away or so maybe 5 to 10 minutes away It's got a tough parking lot but RoboTaxi did a good job navigating through it so we'll see what Waymo does This is actually my first Waymo ride so it should be interesting Alright here's the Waymo

Alright, so I pressed the unlock button from the Uber app actually. I had to use Uber in order to call this Waymo. Good to see you David. And I'm inside the Waymo. So cool, cool, cool. Let's buckle up my seatbelt here and we're gonna start the ride. Hello, from Waymo.

As we get going, just give us one minute to cover a few riding tips. This experience may feel futuristic, but the need to buckle up is the same as always. So keep your seatbelt fastened, please. If you're traveling with little ones or expecting, please see the seatback card for more information. We'll do all the driving, so please don't touch the steering wheel or pedals during your ride.

We may use interior cameras to check on riders and move our phones, but our microphones are only on when you're connected to rider support. So sing your heart out. We can't hear you. You can also use the app or passenger screen to speak to a rider support agent at any time. In the rare case of an emergency... It got a little bit tricked, but it figured its way out around that intersection. Unless there's an urgent need.

So here's the interface back of Waymo. You've got music, route view, temperature, about this car, camera privacy. You can call support here. You could pull over, play music. It's pretty similar to Tesla's interface, I mean, with the support and pull over. And then you've got...

The screen up there with navigation, you obviously have no monitor or person monitoring but you know it's the Waymo now. Please keep your hands off the wheel, the Waymo driver is in control at all times. It's such an old school interface you know this Waymo car yet it has autonomous driving it's pretty trippy.

Alright, I've got about two or three minutes left in this car. So far it's been pretty good, you know, the driving has been pretty decent. Nothing too crazy. "Keys or wallet?" Okay, we're almost at the destination, Merritt Coffee, which I've been to a couple times. "For your safety, the doors will remain locked when we arrive. Pull the handle twice to exit. The first pull unlocks, the second opens the door."

Okay here we are, Merrick Coffee. Let's go into the... Ah, wait what's going on? It didn't even try to get into the Merrick Coffee parking lot, interesting. Okay so it's dropping me off at a nearby street and then I have to walk probably around the corner.

So what I'm gonna do is one thing unlocks it, the second opens the door and then we're out of here. Okay that's Waymo. Yeah interesting here in Austin you need to call the Waymo via the Uber app. They don't have a separate app you could use to call Waymo. And there it's off, it's off.

Okay so it looks like he is making me walk about 50 feet or so to Merritt Coffee. He didn't even try to go into the parking lot. Whereas the Tesla Robotaxi would always take me into the parking lot of Merritt Coffee. Okay here's our Robotaxi. This is going to be the fifth ride of the day. Am I turning down the AC just a tad? Or the wind? It's automatic. Oh I get to do it?

Okay, but it's it's kind of too loud the AC. Can you turn down you the on your end? So, okay, but it's like I can't hear anything All right. So we're in a situation this this robotaxi. It's a little bit strange I could I could

Alright, oh, okay, got it. It was at 67. So when it was at 67, the AC was like on 10 or so. Loudness, I could barely hear much. I mean, yeah, it's kind of loud, but if it's on 69, it drops to like, probably like 5. How about if we go to 70? Oh, now it drops a lot. Now it's at like 3 or so. Nice, yeah, this is, this is, um,

more like it. Oh interesting, so it turns out that the Tesla monitor can't even really I guess they could probably you know adjust the temperature but it looks like if you want to turn up or down the fan speed you just have to play around with the temperature and that will automatically turn up and down the fan speed. Interesting. Alright we've got about one more minute in this. I'm gonna get and drive into this parking lot here.

So my destination is Sprouts Farmers Market. It's kind of where I started this whole day. And it's to the right over here so it'll navigate there. Okay, interesting situation. We've got this big old truck in front of Sprouts Market so I can't even get around it I think.

Probably, it'll just drop me off right here and then it'll figure out how to get around it later or back out. We'll see what happens. Yep. Yeah, interesting. Okay, so it's letting me out close enough and it'll figure out how to get out.

Alright guys, so I just finished five rides in Tesla's Robotaxi today. This is day two. Yesterday I did five as well. And I did a Waymo ride as well. So very, very interesting. All five rides from Tesla's Robotaxi today were perfect. It was basically, you couldn't ask for anything more. There was not even any minor mistakes. It was pretty impressive. Waymo's ride was also perfect. You know?

a tiny hesitation at one spot but it was good.

I noticed though, there's some differences. Waymo is obviously further along in terms of not having a person, right, a safety monitor in the car. And so they've been going at it for quite a while. But you got a lot of fundamental differences. Like Waymo uses LiDAR and HD maps and probably a lot of heuristics, I mean, as well as AI. But they've got probably a much more complicated system, much more expensive system. And I don't know if they have much edge over Tesla. I mean...

Driving-wise, I would give the Edge slightly to Tesla right now. It just feels a little smoother, more natural. Waymo is a little bit, you know, kind of fast, you know, times not 100% human-like. I would say like 98% or something versus Tesla is like near human-like.

The other thing which is interesting is Waymo's solution, I mean I shot that video of Waymo's steering wheel and the center console control. It's just so old school because it's using an old school car, right? And they basically hodgepodge all this stuff on top of it, right? All this expensive sensors and computers and all this stuff and it's like a Frankenstein of a car basically.

And for Tesla, it's just so smooth. It's just so sleek, right? The steering wheel, the screen, that's basically all you see. And full self-driving or robo-taxi gets enabled and boom, the car drives itself. It's just, it looks like the future, right? I think that underscores a very interesting point

kind of theme going on is Tesla built their entire stack the hardware the car their computer their sensors all that stuff their whole system they designed and the software not just the software but they went all the way from building like a neural net from scratch basically their own training you know infrastructure everything

And it just shows, it's just a seamless experience in and out of the car. Yeah, I think Tesla has really got something on their hand. Even Tesla's app, you know, it just works. I'm super impressed.

Yeah, I think Waymo's got something interesting because they're able to drive people around right now, but can they scale? Can they come up with a more efficient solution? Right now, my Waymo ride, it costed $8 for maybe six, seven minutes, eight minutes ride. It was like maybe...

a couple miles or so, which is a fair price, right? I mean, it might have been even cheaper than Uber slightly or similar, but I didn't have to give a tip because it was a Waymo. But Tesla can definitely, I think, undercut that price. Their hardware is so much less expensive. I think it's just a matter of time before Tesla really

gains the capability and the performance really just to scale at a large pace. So anyways, day two has been a fun day of riding RoboTaxi and including Owemo.

And I've been kind of looking around at Tesla's system, trying to see what kind of remote assistance that they might have and how fast they might be able to scale this. What is the performance of their FSD or their RoboTaxi neural nets right now? So a lot of questions still remain. I'm going to be taking more trips this week.

and still analyzing this, scratching my head. I feel a lot more comfortable today than yesterday. Like yesterday was exciting. First time in Robotaxi, first day launch. Today, much more calm and sobered up slash thoughtful and kind of introspective, trying to figure out what the ramifications are on this Tesla Robotaxi launch and ramp. All right, take care guys. We'll see you guys in my next video. Thanks.