Tesla has better software, hardware than Google's Waymo: Elon Musk

Musk has countered recent remarks by the head of Waymo that Tesla has taken a misguided approach to develop fully autonomous cars

Electric car-maker Tesla CEO Elon Musk has countered recent remarks by the head of Waymo, Google's self-driving unit that Tesla has taken a misguided approach to develop fully autonomous cars.

Taking to Twitter, Musk said Tesla has better hardware and software than the self-driving car unit to attain full self-driving system.

"To my surprise, Tesla has better AI hardware & software than Waymo (money)," Musk said in a tweet on Sunday.

Recently, Waymo CEO John Krafcik, in an interview with Manager Magazine, said Tesla has taken a misguided approach to developing fully autonomous cars and its "full self-driving" system will fail to live up to its billing.

"It is a misconception that you can just keep developing a driver assistance system until one day you can magically leap to a fully autonomous driving system," he said. "In terms of robustness and accuracy, for example, our sensors are orders of magnitude better than what we see on the road from other manufacturers."

According to the web site Teslarati, Waymo's vehicles, which are equipped with a variety of sensors including LiDAR, are designed to be operated without a human driver.

The company has even requested its passengers to not touch its autonomous cars' steering wheel while the vehicles are operating.

Meanwhile, Tesla's Full Self-Driving Beta, as well as the company's tech Navigate on Autopilot, still require drivers to keep their hands on the steering wheel to prepare for manual intervention.

As per the report, Tesla aims to develop a full self-driving suite through a vision-based system that relies on incremental improvements that are rolled out over time.

--IANS

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