Waymo recently suspends FDD service in San Francisco amid power outage. How would this incidents be affecting Tesla stock prices ? 🤔 Sharing my opinions. 

The recent power outage in San Francisco truly highlighted the contrasting technological philosophies between Tesla's robotaxis and Waymo's self-driving vehicles! While both aim for autonomous driving, their fundamental approaches to perceiving and navigating the world differ significantly, which became very apparent during the blackout.

*Waymo's Approach: High-Definition Mapping and Redundant Sensors*

Waymo's system, known as the Waymo Driver, relies heavily on a sophisticated suite of sensors including lidar, radar, and cameras, combined with highly detailed, centimeter-scale 3D maps of its operational areas. This approach means their vehicles have a very precise understanding of their environment, including the exact location of traffic lights, lane markings, and other static infrastructure. They also utilize wireless data feeds for real-time information. When a power outage struck San Francisco, knocking out traffic signals and potentially disrupting cellular connectivity, Waymo's vehicles became largely paralyzed. Their safety protocols, designed to prioritize caution in ambiguous situations, caused them to default to full stops at darkened intersections. This conservative behavior, while intended for safety, led to vehicles being stranded and even contributing to traffic congestion. Waymo vehicles also communicate with human remote assistance agents for "unique interactions," but during a substantial power outage, the necessary bandwidth for this communication can be difficult to secure.

*Tesla's Approach: Vision-Only, End-to-End AI*

In stark contrast, Tesla's Full Self-Driving (FSD) system (which powers their robotaxi ambitions) takes a "vision-only" approach, relying chiefly on visible light cameras and a powerful neural network, rather than lidar or detailed 3D maps. Elon Musk has famously called lidar "stupid, expensive and unnecessary". Tesla's FSD software is trained on billions of miles of real-world driving data collected from its fleet of vehicles, including a wide array of "messy" and chaotic situations. This extensive training aims to teach the neural network to perceive and react to the world much like a human driver would, even when infrastructure fails. Crucially, Tesla's current FSD (Supervised) system requires a human driver to be present and attentive behind the wheel, acting as a supervisor ³. During the San Francisco power outage, Elon Musk stated that "Tesla Robotaxis were unaffected by the SF power outage". This suggests that Tesla's system, combined with the human supervisory element, was able to navigate the chaotic conditions, such as non-functioning traffic lights, without becoming stranded. The "mess-tolerant" training of their AI, which has learned from diverse real-world scenarios, is credited for this resilience . The human driver can simply take control and navigate around the problem, maintaining service continuity.

In essence, Waymo's highly precise, infrastructure-dependent system struggled when that infrastructure failed, while Tesla's vision-based, human-supervised approach, trained on real-world variability, appeared to handle the disruption more seamlessly.