Tesla‘s chief Elon Musk was questioned on Tuesday about Waymo, Google’s robotaxi unit which will be one of the main rivals in the U.S. starting from June when the company begins to provide paid fully autonomous rides in Austin.
In July last year, Google announced it was investing another $5 billion into Waymo, their self-driving robotaxi unit. On X, Musk reacted to the news with “Waymo money” followed by a laughing emoji.
Earlier this year, Alphabet and Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai revealed Waymo had reached “more than 200,000 paid trips” each week across Los Angeles, Phoenix and San Francisco noting that figures have jumped “20 times in less than two years.”
Questioned on Tuesday on how does Tesla robotaxi services “expect to compare against Waymo’s offering, especially regarding pricing, geofencing and regulatory flexibility,” Musk started by joking about the investment needed for each robotaxi.
“The issue with Waymo’s cars is it costs Way-mo [way more] money”, but that is the issue,” Musk joked before comparing the building costs.
“The car is very expensive, made in low volume. Teslas are probably cost 25% or 20% of what a Waymo costs and made in very high volume,” Tesla’s chief added.
Waymo, a subsidiary of Alphabet, announced in December plans to deploy its all-electric Jaguar I-PACE vehicles in Miami, with public ride-hailing services expected to begin in 2026.
A few weeks later, Google’s chief described Tesla as a leader in the autonomous vehicle sector, positioning it alongside Waymo, during his appearance at the New York Times DealBook Summit.
“I think obviously Tesla is a leader in the space. It looks to me like Tesla and Waymo are the top two,” Pichai said. Immediately before, the chief executive of Google had noted that Tesla “is making amazing progress too.”
“I mean Tesla is making amazing progress too. I think you know we are in six to seven cities already by the end of this year” Pichai stated adding later “In the U.S. by next year we will be in like ten cities.”
At its robotaxi launch event held last October, Tesla unveiled its Cybercab, a two-door model with no pedals nor steering wheel. The company said production of the model would start in 2026 and that the model would be priced below $30,000.
“Ironically, like, we’re the ones to make the bet that a pure AI solution with cameras and what do you have? The car actually will listen for sirens and that kind of thing. It’s the right move,” Musk stated.
Tesla’s CEO said Google-backed Waymo “decided that an expensive sensor suite is the way to go, even though Google is very good at AI” before dismissing Waymo as a Tesla competitor.
“I don’t see anyone being able to compete with Tesla at present. I’m sure that’ll change eventually, but at least as far as I’m aware, because we will have, I don’t know, 99% market share or something ridiculous,” he said.
“That 90-something-percent, at least, I don’t know, some of them might change, but if we have millions of cars deployed next year unless others have millions of cars deployed, like, we’ll have — unless we’re blocked by regulatory situations, it won’t be long. I mean, in a few years, we’ll have 10 million autonomous cars on the roads and counting,” Musk concluded.
Four years ago, in early 2021, Waymo’s former CEO John Krafcik, dismissed Tesla’s software. He called it “a misconception that you can simply develop a driver-assistance system further until one day you can magically jump to a fully autonomous driving system.”
