Zoox co-founder on Tesla’s autonomous driving: ‘they don’t have the technology that works’

Zoox co-founder and CTO Jesse Levinson doesn’t imagine Tesla will launch a robot transportation service in California (or anywhere else) next 12 months, despite what Elon Musk recently claimed.

“The fundamental problem is that they don’t have the technology that works,” Levinson said Wednesday at the TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 conference. “I also want to make a distinction between a driver-assist system that drives most of the time — except when it doesn’t work, and then you have to take over — compared to a system that is so reliable and robust that no person is needed.”

Levinson went further and specifically noted Tesla’s decision to rely solely on cameras to support its driver assistance system. “Our perspective is that it really will take much more hardware than Tesla installs in its vehicles to build a robotaxi that is not only as safe, but especially safer than a human,” he said.

Levinson’s comments come just weeks after Musk unveiled a prototype of Tesla’s so-called robotics “Cybercab.” Musk also announced at the Cybercab conference that Tesla wants to start out enabling Model 3 sedans and Model Y SUVs to operate as robots in California and Texas by the end of 2025.

Levinson said he uses Tesla’s self-driving (supervised) software “every few weeks.” And while he called it “impressive,” he also said he found it “a little stressful.”

“He usually does something good and then he kind of lulls you into a false sense of complacency and then he does something bad,” he said. “You think: Oh my God!”

Levinson further added that he believes FSD is “about 100 times less safe than a human if you look at all publicly available metrics.” (Tesla releases quarterly safety reports claim that driver assistance systems cause fewer accidents than cars without them – although these are self-reported statistics criticized as selective.)

The comments about Tesla got here as Levinson announced that Zoox will launch a custom-built robotaxi in the San Francisco and Las Vegas markets in the coming weeks. The company plans to make them available in the Early Rider program in 2025.