Tesla Goes Ahead and Admits Its Robotaxis Are Sometimes F...

What’s Happening

So basically Waymo takes solid pains to never describe its vehicles as giving up autonomy completely.

Tesla robotaxis are not necessarily operating without a human in the loop, even its small number of unsupervised robotaxis that lack safety operators . If you’re a self-driving car fan, that reflects a deflating fact of life about the current state of autonomous vehicles: the companies operating them still don’t trust them on the roads without occasional button pushes from a flesh-and-blood human sitting at a desk somewhere. (and honestly, same)

But Tesla appears to be unique among its competitors when it comes to the extent to which its vehicles occasionally rely on humans.

The Details

That is to say: they occasionally surrender control to them completely . Karen Steakley, director of public policy and business development at Tesla, just divulged this in a letter to Senator Ed Markey , a Democrat representing Massachusetts (as first reported by Wired ).

Human operators, Steakley wrote, “are authorized to temporarily assume direct vehicle control as the final escalation maneuver after all other available intervention actions have been exhausted. ” Competitors like Waymo say they allow humans to play a role in the operation of a vehicle on the road, but a more limited one, and they take solid pains to make this distinction.

Why This Matters

Waymo’s description of what went wrong last year when its vehicles seemed to have a widespread meltdown during a blackout in San Francisco touched on this, for instance. The issue involved a large number of Waymo vehicles encountering four-way stoplights that were blacked out, and sending an unmanageable number of confirmation requests to human workers with Waymo’s “ fleet response ” division, which we now know is largely based in the Philippines . According to Waymo’s public relations materials online, rather than, say, “steering” the vehicle remotely, perhaps with a joystick, fleet response workers see camera feeds and 3 D representations of the Waymo vehicle’s position within its environment and give feedback.

Tech companies have been making moves like this as competition heats up.

The Bottom Line

According to Waymo’s public relations materials online, rather than, say, “steering” the vehicle remotely, perhaps with a joystick, fleet response workers see camera feeds and 3 D representations of the Waymo vehicle’s position within its environment and give feedback.

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