Elon Musk tells Google executive that “Waymo never really had a chance against Tesla”

Not one for modesty, Tesla CEO Elon Musk responded to a post on X by Jeff Dean, chief scientist at Google DeepMind, by saying, “Waymo never really had a chance against Tesla.” He added, “This will be obvious in hindsight.”

Dean had noted that Waymo vehicles have driven riders 96 million miles autonomously without a driver, alluding to the fact that Tesla’s Robotaxi service still requires safety operators in the front seat in both its locations.

Tesla currently operates about 30 Robotaxi vehicles in Austin and 120 in the Bay Area, while Waymo had more than 2,500 across the country (at least 200 in Austin and 1,000 in the Bay Area) as of late November. Musk has said Tesla would remove safety monitors in Austin and that it would scale to 500 vehicles there and 1,000 in the Bay Area by year-end, but the clock is ticking on reaching those goals.

Tesla, of course, is more focused on the 6.7 billion miles its vehicles have driven with Full Self-Driving tech, driver assistance software that requires a driver be present and paying attention. The idea is that, with a software update, millions of Teslas could be turned into potential robotaxis.

Read more on Tesla and Waymo’s battle for driverless supremacy here.