While one American company runs half a million driverless rides a week using cameras, lidar and radar together, the other has logged 14 crashes in about 800,000 miles of robotaxi service with a paid human sitting in the front seat

Waymo is operating half a million driverless rides a week using cameras lidar and radar together. Tesla's robotaxi service in Austin has logged 14 crashes across roughly 800,000 miles with a paid human safety monitor in the front seat. The remarks about sensor requirements came from Waymo Co-CEO Dmitri Dolgov during a talk at Y Combinator's Startup School 2026. Dolgov stated that cameras alone are insufficient for full autonomy and that lidar and radar are necessary for redundancy and performance in poor visibility conditions.