Zoox co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Jesse Levinson cast doubt on Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) technology, questioning its readiness for unsupervised driving during an interview at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference. Levinson’s comments come as Zoox, an Amazon-owned company, initiates its first driverless ride-hailing services in two U.S. cities.
Levinson suggested that Tesla lacks the necessary technology for fully autonomous driving without human intervention. “The more fundamental issue is they don’t have technology that works,” Levinson remarked. “By works, I want to differentiate between a driver assistance system that drives most of the time — except when it doesn’t, and then you have to take over — versus a system that’s so reliable and robust that you don’t need a person in it.”
Levinson further critiqued Tesla’s camera-only FSD approach, indicating it could “lull you into this false sense of complacency” due to its limitations in safety. “Our perspective is you really do need significantly more hardware than Tesla is putting in their vehicles to build a robotaxi that is not just as safe, but especially safer than a human,” he added.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk responded indirectly, noting that Zoox likely wouldn’t have survived without Amazon’s acquisition, suggesting that financial support from the tech giant has been instrumental in Zoox’s current developments.
If he hadn’t gotten bailed out by Amazon, his company would be dead already
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 30, 2024
