Anthony Levandowski, the engineer who co-founded Google’s self-driving program in 2009 (now Waymo), has made a surprising declaration: he’d rather be in Tesla’s position than Waymo’s in the autonomous vehicle race. In an interview with Business Insider, Levandowski credited Tesla’s massive advantage to one critical factor: data.
Tesla’s fleet of millions of vehicles on the road, many equipped with semi-autonomous features for parking and lane-switching, continuously collect and transmit data back to the company. This creates an unprecedented learning loop for Tesla’s AI systems. “There’s millions of Teslas out there that are constantly alerting, feeding back their data to Tesla to make the product better,” Levandowski explained. He estimates that Tesla has examples of perhaps 10,000 or even a million times more data than Waymo across various driving scenarios.
The comments come after Tesla’s Cybercab unveiling last week, which received mixed reactions from investors and analysts. Tesla’s stock tumbled following the event, wiping $15 billion from Elon Musk’s net worth. While Levandowski hoped for “a little more steak and less sizzle” regarding technical details, he remains bullish on Tesla’s overall strategic position.
A key technological difference between the competitors is Tesla’s camera-and-AI-only approach versus Waymo’s use of expensive lidar sensors. Musk has previously called lidar “a crutch,” betting on a vision-based future. Levandowski agrees with this direction, predicting that “there’s no reason why Waymo can’t drop their lasers later on. In fact, I think that they will.”
Levandowski, who has a controversial history including a presidential pardon from Donald Trump after being sentenced for stealing trade secrets, acknowledged that accelerated AI progress in recent years has significantly impacted the self-driving industry. “We couldn’t do what we do today at Pronto without some of this new foundational work that’s happened,” he said, referring to his current venture focusing on autonomous trucking and mining.
Meanwhile, Uber may be the dark horse winner in the robotaxi race. Since selling its self-driving division in 2020, Uber has partnered with multiple autonomous vehicle companies, including Waymo, Wayve, and GM’s Cruise, offering a low-capital model that leverages its existing rider network. Analysts see Uber as a near-term winner, with its stock trading higher after Tesla’s robotaxi event.
Key Quotes
I’d rather be in Tesla’s shoes than in Waymo’s shoes.
Anthony Levandowski, who co-founded Google’s self-driving program (now Waymo) in 2009, made this striking statement to Business Insider. Coming from someone who helped create Waymo, this endorsement of Tesla’s position carries significant weight in the autonomous vehicle industry.
There’s millions of Teslas out there that are constantly alerting, feeding back their data to Tesla to make the product better, and that’s ultimately what’s really going to be the differentiator here — that you have the richest, most consistent data to continuously improve over time.
Levandowski explained why he believes Tesla has the advantage in the robotaxi race. This quote emphasizes the critical role of continuous data collection and AI learning loops in developing autonomous vehicle technology.
I would say the Tesla has examples of maybe 10,000 or maybe a million times more data than Waymo does in terms of all other scenarios of driving.
Levandowski quantified Tesla’s data advantage over Waymo, highlighting the massive scale difference between Tesla’s deployed fleet and Waymo’s more limited test vehicles. This data gap could prove decisive in training more robust AI systems.
That’s effectively where I think a lot of this progress that you’re starting to see again in self-driving is really coming from. We couldn’t do what we do today at Pronto without some of this new foundational work that’s happened.
Levandowski acknowledged how recent advances in general AI technology have accelerated progress in autonomous driving. This connects the self-driving industry’s recent momentum to broader breakthroughs in AI research and development.
Our Take
Levandowski’s endorsement of Tesla over his own creation is remarkable, but his reasoning reveals a fundamental truth about AI development: data is the new oil, and Tesla has struck a gusher. While Waymo has focused on perfecting technology with a limited fleet, Tesla has been quietly building the world’s largest real-world driving dataset through millions of customer vehicles.
However, there’s a critical caveat: data quality matters as much as quantity. Tesla’s semi-autonomous features operate with human oversight, potentially introducing different learning patterns than Waymo’s fully autonomous approach. The question isn’t just who has more data, but whose data better prepares AI systems for true autonomy.
The wild card is Uber’s aggregator strategy—owning neither the technology nor the vehicles, but controlling customer access. In the platform economy, distribution often trumps innovation. If multiple autonomous systems achieve comparable safety and cost, Uber’s existing network could make it the ultimate winner, regardless of whose technology proves superior.
Why This Matters
This analysis from a self-driving pioneer reveals the critical importance of data in AI development, particularly for autonomous vehicles. Levandowski’s perspective matters because he literally helped create the industry, giving him unique insight into what separates winners from losers in the robotaxi race.
The story highlights a fundamental tension in AI development: quality versus quantity of training data. Tesla’s approach of deploying millions of semi-autonomous vehicles creates an unprecedented data collection advantage, potentially offsetting Waymo’s technical sophistication and safety-first approach. This has broader implications for AI companies across industries—those with access to real-world data at scale may ultimately prevail over those with superior technology but limited deployment.
The convergence of general AI progress with autonomous driving is particularly significant. Levandowski’s acknowledgment that recent AI breakthroughs enable capabilities impossible just years ago suggests the self-driving industry may finally be approaching a tipping point. For businesses, workers, and society, the question is no longer if autonomous vehicles will arrive, but which company’s approach—Tesla’s data-driven strategy, Waymo’s precision engineering, or Uber’s platform aggregation—will dominate the transformation of transportation.
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Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/waymo-cofounder-tesla-robotaxi-data-strategy-self-driving-2024-10