Tesla announced the launch of autonomous taxis and vans, but due to a lack of details, the stock price plummeted by 8.78%. Anthony Levandowski, a pioneer in the autonomous driving industry, believes that Tesla has a significant advantage in data and may lead Waymo in certain key areas. He supports Musk's vision, believing that Tesla's autonomous driving technology has potential, but hopes that the conference can provide more substantive content
Pioneer in the autonomous driving industry, Anthony Levandowski (referred to as "Levandowski" below), stated that currently Tesla and Musk have an extraordinary dominant position in the field, and may even be ahead of Waymo in certain key aspects.
Last week, American company Tesla unveiled the autonomous driving taxi (Cybercab) and autonomous driving van (Robovan). Due to the lack of details, many analysts were disappointed, leading to a sharp 8.78% drop in Tesla's stock price the next day, reaching the lowest level in nearly a month.
Levandowski mentioned that although he has some reservations, he still believes in Musk's vision for Tesla and the future of the world. He agrees with Musk's approach of using only vision for achieving autonomous driving, rather than using "expensive sensors", and believes that fully autonomous driving seems within reach.
In 2009, Levandowski co-founded Google's autonomous driving project "Project Chauffeur" with others, which was later renamed Waymo in 2016. As a project engineer, Levandowski is considered a pioneer in the autonomous driving car industry.
Levandowski expressed his optimism towards Tesla as a whole due to a key factor: data. He explained that Tesla already has cars on the road, some of which are using semi-autonomous features to perform tasks like parking and lane changes, constantly learning. Musk has the "most powerful fleet to do this."
He said, "Millions of Tesla cars are providing data to the company to improve the product, and this is ultimately the real differentiator - you will have the richest, most consistent data to continuously improve over time."
"I would say, in all other driving scenarios, Tesla may have ten thousand times or even a million times more data than Waymo." Regarding Tesla's event last week, Levandowski expressed that he hopes Tesla's autonomous driving technology has "more substantial content and less hype."
According to Musk, vehicles like CyberCab will rely on artificial intelligence and cameras, rather than common hardware used by competitors such as lidar. He previously mentioned that lidar is a "crutch", too expensive and bulky for Tesla's cars.
Levandowski agreed with this, stating, "Waymo has no reason not to give up lidar in the future. In fact, I think they will." He also pointed out that Google pays a high price for each Waymo car, "you may need to acquire a car company to produce the cars you want."
After Tesla's event, some analysts believe that at least in the short term, Uber and Lyft will be the leaders in autonomous ride-hailing. Levandowski commented, "The future of Uber and Lyft is an interesting question."