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One of two things is true: 1) Waymo lives in Elon Musk’s head rent-free and is going to continue to be the robotaxi leader in North America for years to come, or 2) Waymo has been living on borrowed time, as Elon Musk claims, and Tesla will sprint past the company like the tortoise vs. the hare if the hare had simply woken up earlier. (Using that tortoise vs. the hare metaphor, though, I’m sure many Tesla FSD critics will say that Tesla is still sleeping on the need for radar and/or lidar in addition to cameras.)
Whatever the case may be, the Tesla vs. Waymo battle has been raging for about a decade, and it continues to do so.
Jeff Dean, Chief Scientist at Google DeepMind & Google Research and Gemini Lead, didn’t name Tesla or Elon Musk in a post on Tuesday, but he apparently poked the honey badger nonetheless. He wrote:
“Waymo’s system, fueled by careful collection of a large volume of fully autonomous data, is the most advanced, large-scale application of embodied AI today. Very proud to see this level of engineering rigor tackling safe autonomous driving making the roads safer for everyone (and it has been nice to see various Google research collaborations with Waymo be a part of these advances!).
“The insights here are foundational for how we design and safely scale all complex AI systems.
“Read more at: https://waymo.com/blog/2025/12/demonstrably-safe-ai-for-autonomous-driving “
Someone on X responded, “I would be interested to see your arguments compared to Tesla who also claim to be the most advanced large scale application of embodied AI.”
Jeff did respond, writing: “I don’t think Tesla has anywhere near the volume of rider-only autonomous miles that Waymo has (96M for Waymo, as of today). The safety data is quite compelling for Waymo, as well. For more details, see: https://waymo.com/safety/impact/ ”
That’s where it apparently got on Elon Musk’s radar, or at least got him to respond. This broad claim implying doom for Waymo followed: “Waymo never really had a chance against Tesla. This will be obvious in hindsight.” This basically echoes what Musk has been saying for about a decade. It’s the same argument time and time again — Waymo can’t scale like Tesla will be able to scale, and Waymo’s system will cost too much in the end, so Waymo will lose and die. Looking backward only, Waymo has been winning in terms of actual robotaxi deployments and growth. However, the Tesla argument is that could change at any moment — or very, very soon now — and then Tesla will be able to quickly shoot past Waymo, whose big numbers will soon look small.
Whether Musk is right or wrong, we have to stick with the “time will tell” concession because that’s all we can really honestly do until he is proven right or Waymo becomes profitable while competing against a more mature FSD-powered robotaxi rollout. However, for the time being, Waymo has clearly scaled up to a massive degree — faster than anyone else — and is quickly entering more and more markets. I do also wonder whether Waymo has plans to start integrating its tech into conventional automakers’ vehicles and licensing the software. In theory, that could bring consumer vehicles into Tesla’s FSD realm in numerous markets covering much of the market. Critics claim Waymo’s system is far too expensive for that, but others claim the costs keep coming down rapidly, and if mass produced for consumer vehicles, it could reach a level where it can be pretty easily rolled into the price of premium-class vehicles. Whether Waymo is working on getting to that place or just plans to continue in the robotaxi market, we’ll see.
I think many Tesla fans now believe Waymo will die in 2026 due to advances coming from Tesla. Naturally, Waymo fans largely believe that Tesla can’t achieve the robotaxi hype it has been building up for 10 years, and see 2026 as a big growth period for Waymo. I have a tendency to have an open mind about what’s possible until I have a clear, firm understanding of how things will go. My current favorite discussion on these topics, though, is here: Digging Deeper into Differences Between Tesla Full Self-Driving & Waymo Driver. In the past (several years ago), I argued that Tesla FSD would win out and Waymo wouldn’t be able to compete. At the moment, though, I lean more toward the arguments put forth by “Matthew2312” in that article. We will see.
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