With Waymo and Cruise given approval to offer fared autonomous taxi rides across San Francisco, it's fair to say that $GM and $GOOGL have won the self-driving race and $TSLA lost.

There were many signs that Tesla wasn't competitive in the self-driving realm. One, they disregarded LiDAR, a technology vital to helping vehicles navigate through places especially when conditions aren't perfect like they are in California. Two, Tesla has been stingy with the amount of R&D and Capex that they spend in developing self-driving capabilities and investing in the factories that make the hardware necessary for self-driving. Three, unlike other autonomous driving companies, Tesla falsely advertises the autonomous driving capabilities of its vehicles. The fans that tout Tesla's false claims further end up inspiring more vehicular accidents throughout the world. Those same fans naively question why the media, public health and public safety experts, and others criticize Tesla more than any other autonomous driving companies while simultaneously taking Tesla's false claims on its autonomous driving capabilities seriously.

I am excited to see these two companies make the experience of exploring the city of SF fun. Seeing these vehicles being tested on the roads throughout downtown SF amazes me. They drive like human drivers and navigate through SF traffic better than any Tesla I've seen with FSD/AutoPilot/whatever autonomous software they use. This video by Silicon Valley Girl shows how amazing Waymo's robotaxi service is.

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