Waymo with expensive lidars is dead man walking, Tesla’s cheap camera based robotaxis do work: Tesla's robotaxis operate without safety drivers for the first time

Tesla has begun testing its camera-only robotaxis in Austin without human occupants in the vehicle, a significant step in its autonomous driving development. However, Waymo is not "fully dead" and in fact operates the only current commercial, fully driverless ride-hailing service with paying customers in multiple cities (dead man walking).

 

Tesla's Unsupervised Testing

 

    Austin, Texas: In mid-December 2025, Tesla officially started testing its autonomous vehicles on public roads in Austin with no human occupants present, a first for the company.

 

    Vision-Only Approach: This testing utilizes Tesla's vision-only Full Self-Driving (FSD) software, which relies solely on cameras and eschews more expensive sensors like lidar and radar used by competitors.

 

    Testing Phase: These are internal tests, and the vehicles are not yet available for public, paying customers without a human supervisor in the car. The move follows Elon Musk's repeated promises to remove safety monitors from Austin vehicles by the end of 2025.

 

Waymo vs. Tesla: The Current Landscape

The two companies employ fundamentally different approaches to achieving autonomy and have different current operational statuses.

 

    Waymo (Alphabet): Uses a multi-modal sensor approach that includes lidar, radar, and cameras for redundancy and precise 3D mapping. It has been operating a commercial, fully driverless ride-hailing service in cities like Phoenix and San Francisco since as early as 2020 and 2023, respectively, and is currently the industry leader in paid, driverless miles.

 

    Tesla: Aims for a cheaper, more scalable, vision-only system that mimics human vision and does not rely on high-definition maps. While Tesla is a newer entrant to the commercial ride-hailing space, its recent move to unsupervised testing is seen as a major milestone.

 

The Germans, people loving cars, seems to be excited to become the roadkill of this all:

 

“In Austin, Texas, it's now full speed ahead for the Tesla robotaxi.

In Texas, Tesla's electric cars are driving completely autonomously for the first time, without safety drivers. This milestone in Tesla's robotaxi program has thrilled the stock market: the share price jumped to a new yearly high.

Six months after the launch of the first robotaxi pilot project in Austin, Texas, Tesla has removed human safety drivers from the cars. Since June, Tesla has been operating a limited ride-hailing service there with its own Model Y electric cars, equipped with the "Full Self-Driving" (FSD) autopilot system. However, until now, an employee has always been sitting in the passenger seat, ready to intervene if necessary. In a post published on his X platform over the weekend, Elon Musk announced: "Testing is underway with no occupants in the car" – the test vehicles are therefore operating completely without anyone on board for the first time.”