# Self driving cars are still decades away **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 10, 2017, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/self-driving-cars-are-still-decades-away/798499 "2017-10-10T17:38:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 149
**Author:** ![steronz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steronz/32/11765_2.png) [@steronz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/steronz)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2026, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/self-driving-cars-are-still-decades-away/798499/2968 "2026-01-29T22:22:17Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > Says who? The existence of an in-car safety monitor doesn’t mean it isn’t L4. Waymo had safety drivers for years after their initial launch. And they still need remote control every so often. > > I don’t expect it to take nearly that long for Tesla. After all, we just saw a long drive without one. Maybe a few months, still, but still this year. Sorry to pick on you Dr. S, you just happen to be our resident Tesla optimist. This isn’t just in response to you, more of an update after the latest Tesla news about Cybercab production “starting this year.” 6 months have come and gone since Tesla’s lackluster Robotaxi rollout. I basically forgot all about the thing, which doesn’t really bode well for something that Tesla was touting as just around the corner (and, as Dr. Strangelove guesstimates above, expected by the end of 2025.) It ends up that earlier this month, Tesla _did_ launch a truly driverless (no safety monitor) Robotaxi service in Austin. Except… did they really? [Evidently they’ve quietly rolled it back.](https://electrek.co/2026/01/28/teslas-unsupervised-robotaxis-vanish/) > Let’s call this what it is: another marketing stunt. > > If Tesla truly had unsupervised Robotaxis operating in Austin, riders would be posting videos constantly. David Moss wouldn’t be 0-for-42. The evidence would be everywhere. > > Instead, we have a single announcement, a 4% stock bump, and silence. So not only have they failed to deliver, they’ve apparently lied about it. > As we [reported last week](https://electrek.co/2026/01/22/tesla-didnt-remove-the-robotaxi-safety-monitor-it-just-moved-them-to-a-trailing-car/), the “unsupervised” Robotaxis spotted on January 22 were all being followed by trailing Tesla vehicles with safety monitors inside. Tesla didn’t remove supervision, it just moved it to a different car. > > Now even that setup appears to have been scaled back or paused entirely. The vast majority of rides have safety monitors back inside the vehicle, sitting in either the driver’s seat or passenger seat. > > This follows the exact pattern of the “driverless delivery” stunt from June 2025: a one-time demonstration for the cameras, timed for maximum stock impact, never to be repeated. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2026, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/self-driving-cars-are-still-decades-away/798499/2969 "2026-02-06T20:32:37Z")
Turns out Waymo’s “self-driving” taxis are just being driven by operators in the Phillipines. > **[It Turns Out That When Waymos Are Stumped, They Get Intervention From Workers...](https://futurism.com/advanced-transport/waymos-controlled-workers-philippines)** > > During a Congressional hearing, Waymo's chief safety officer, Mauricio Peña, was grilled over the company's reliance on overseas workers. ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2026, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/self-driving-cars-are-still-decades-away/798499/2970 "2026-02-06T20:37:25Z")
They are occasionally driven remotely when they get stuck. This is old news. ---
**Author:** ![TroutMan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/troutman/32/6721_2.png) [@TroutMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TroutMan)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2026, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/self-driving-cars-are-still-decades-away/798499/2971 "2026-02-06T20:39:07Z")
And the whole “but Phillipines!” thing has a slightly racist tinge to it. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2026, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/self-driving-cars-are-still-decades-away/798499/2972 "2026-02-06T20:48:37Z")
It’s certainly ragingly nationalist. “Foreigners in foreign countries can’t be trusted” is one of the early planks of the Fascism cookbook. Nothing more to see here than RW pandering to their base. ---
**Author:** ![steronz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steronz/32/11765_2.png) [@steronz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/steronz)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2026, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/self-driving-cars-are-still-decades-away/798499/2973 "2026-02-06T20:52:27Z")
Allow me to read the article for you both. > [@hajario](#): > > They are occasionally driven remotely when they get stuck. This is old news. Not driven, but “influenced”, as the article goes into detail to explain. The article also covers what you just said: > Waymo has been fairly upfront about its human operators. In a [May 2024 blog post](https://waymo.com/blog/2024/05/fleet-response/), the company compared it to a “phone-a-friend.” > [@TroutMan](#): > > And the whole “but Phillipines!” thing has a slightly racist tinge to it. The headline is poor. (For that matter, the whole article is pretty shitty clickbait). From the article (bolding mine): > After being pressed for a breakdown on where these overseas operators operate, Peña said he didn’t have those stats, explaining that some operators live in the US, but others live much further away, **including** in the Philippines. I don’t know why the author chose to focus in on the Philippines, and I’m not willing to watch the congressional hearing video to find out, but I can understand lawmakers being concerned that Waymo can’t even tell them _where_ these drivers are operating from, what the training is, what the infrastructure looks like, etc. Would you be comfortable if they were operating out of Iran? I mean, it seems like a far-fetched attack vector but I don’t think it’s unreasonable for congress to ask questions and be concerned. ---
**Author:** ![Maserschmidt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maserschmidt/32/18829_2.png) [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2026, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/self-driving-cars-are-still-decades-away/798499/2974 "2026-02-06T20:52:46Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > Nothing more to see here than RW pandering to their base. Markey is a doddering Democrat who often pretends he understands modern things. > [@hajario](#): > > They are occasionally driven remotely when they get stuck. This is old news. This isn’t even that news, since they’re not even driving remotely per the article posted. ---
**Author:** ![PastTense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pasttense/32/14550_2.png) [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2026, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/self-driving-cars-are-still-decades-away/798499/2975 "2026-02-06T21:02:03Z")
The concern I would have about remote operators (and more so in foreign countries like the Philippines) is the reliability of the internet connection. It’s part of the whole “let’s put everything in the cloud” movement out of Silicon Valley: in lots of places cellular and internet connections are not 100% reliable. ---
**Author:** ![Maserschmidt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maserschmidt/32/18829_2.png) [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2026, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/self-driving-cars-are-still-decades-away/798499/2976 "2026-03-29T21:43:23Z")
Waymo is struggling with school bus STOP signals. > But in Austin, Waymo’s vehicles struggled for months to learn how to stop for school buses as drivers picked up and dropped off children. An official with the Austin Independent School District (AISD) alleged that the vehicles had, in at least 19 instances, “illegally and dangerously” passed the district’s school buses while their red lights were flashing and their stop arms were extended rather than coming to complete stops, as the law requires. Austin ISD tried to help them, even having a half day of live training, and yet: > Still, by mid-January, over a month later, the school district reported at least four more school-bus-passing incidents had taken place in Austin. “The data we collected from the beginning of the school year to the end of the semester shows that about 98 percent of people that receive one violation do not receive another,” an official with the school’s police department told the local NBC affiliate that month. “That tells us that the person is learning, but it does not appear the Waymo automated driver system is learning through its software updates, its recall, what have you, because we are still having violations.” My genuinely puzzled question: are there school buses in Scottsdale, where a lot of the training took place!? This was my last free article on Wired; YMMV. > **[A School District Tried to Help Train Waymos to Stop for School Buses. It...](https://www.wired.com/story/a-school-district-tried-to-help-train-waymos-to-stop-for-school-buses-it-didnt-work/)** > > The incidents in Austin raise questions about how self-driving cars “learn” and adapt to their surroundings. ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2026, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/self-driving-cars-are-still-decades-away/798499/2977 "2026-03-29T21:58:08Z")
Tesla took until relatively recently to figure it out but it works flawlessly now in my limited experience. At least there is a person in the car to hit the brakes in a Tesla. The school busses in the US have standardized designs so it should be an easy problem to solve. ---
**Author:** ![PastTense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pasttense/32/14550_2.png) [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2026, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/self-driving-cars-are-still-decades-away/798499/2978 "2026-05-23T18:54:28Z")
> **[Waymo expands pause to four cities as robotaxis keep driving into floods |...](https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/21/waymo-pauses-service-in-four-cities-as-robotaxis-keep-driving-into-floods/)** > > Waymo's robotaxi service is now suspended in both Atlanta and San Antonio, as the company works to stop its vehicles from driving into flooded roads. Well, who would want to go anywhere when it is raining anyway? ---
**Author:** ![Maserschmidt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maserschmidt/32/18829_2.png) [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2026, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/self-driving-cars-are-still-decades-away/798499/2979 "2026-05-23T23:12:35Z")
They should keep driving into those floods to build out their dataset. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2026, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/self-driving-cars-are-still-decades-away/798499/2980 "2026-05-24T03:23:41Z")
I think Waymo is all wet. ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2026, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/self-driving-cars-are-still-decades-away/798499/2981 "2026-06-09T16:39:37Z")
> [@hajario](#): > > 14.3 is now the version that will feel “sentient” according to Elan. The robotaxis will get 14.2 instead of waiting for 14.3. Well that didn’t happen. 14.3 has been out for a bit but it’s just an incremental point release. It is on the robotaxis also though so it’s a unified code. The “sentient” thing will (supposedly) be v15 coming to us (supposedly) in late '26 or early '27. FSD is now fully approved in four European countries (Netherlands, Estonia, Lithuania and, as of yesterday, Denmark) as well as previously approved US, Canada, Mexico, New Zealand, Australia, South Korea and China. There is a very long list of countries pending approval which I will cut and paste from the article below: Americas: Chile, Colombia EU: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, and Sweden Euro, Non-EU: Albania, Andorra, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Liechtenstein, Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Norway, Serbia, Switzerland, Ukraine, and the U.K Middle East: Israel, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkiye, UAE Asia: India, Japan, Malaysia, Taiwan, Thailand > **[Tesla Reveals Full List of Countries Pending FSD Approval - Not a Tesla App](https://www.notateslaapp.com/news/4249/tesla-reveals-full-list-of-countries-pending-fsd-approval)** > > Tesla's global expansion of FSD (Supervised) is actively moving forward, with AI chief Ashok Elluswamy recently every country currently awaiting approval ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2026, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/self-driving-cars-are-still-decades-away/798499/2982 "2026-06-10T21:57:27Z")
Belgium just granted approval. A lot more of the EU should do so as well over the coming months. ---
**Author:** ![TroutMan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/troutman/32/6721_2.png) [@TroutMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TroutMan)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2026, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/self-driving-cars-are-still-decades-away/798499/2983 "2026-06-10T22:07:45Z")
What does approval mean in this case? Before this, were cars with FSD not allowed to be sold, or were drivers not allowed to activate it, or did Tesla geofence it so it could not be enabled within a restricted country? Was Autopilot approved long ago? ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2026, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/self-driving-cars-are-still-decades-away/798499/2984 "2026-06-10T22:13:18Z")
Every country has to give regulatory approval for it to be used there. FSD is subscription based so all cars technically have it but it won’t be able to be activated if you are in a restricted zone. This isn’t an issue in North America or China. You pay for it or you don’t. I presume if you’re a Dane and you pay for it, it will stop working if you cross over into Germany. ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2026, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/self-driving-cars-are-still-decades-away/798499/2985 "2026-06-29T13:50:39Z")
Holy shit. They actually delivered a version of v14 for HW3 cars. I didn’t think that would ever happen. This puts off Tesla having to do expensive retrofits on older vehicles that have lifetime FSD purchased. It’s called v14 Lite. They are currently on v12.6. More background. The current version of hardware is HW4. HW3 cars have an older chipset and they haven’t gotten a FSD update in, I think, over a year. The people who bought a lifetime subscription in those cars three years ago and older were promised that their hardware would still work with future versions of they’d get a retrofit. I thought for sure that Elon was just slow rolling things so that more and more of them would go out of service before the retrofitting would need to be done but they appear to have pulled it off and actually on time. ---
**Author:** ![TroutMan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/troutman/32/6721_2.png) [@TroutMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TroutMan)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2026, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/self-driving-cars-are-still-decades-away/798499/2986 "2026-06-29T15:21:09Z")
How much weight is “Lite” carrying? Not to be cynical, but I could take an older version of software, make some cosmetic tweaks, and relabel it to the new version number. > [@hajario](#): > > I thought for sure that Elon was just slow rolling things so that more and more of them would go out of service before the retrofitting would need to be done but they appear to have pulled it off and actually on time. And this still doesn’t really address the promise of every vehicle having “all the hardware needed for full self-driving,” as far as I can tell. Does it really change the need to retrofit old hardware, other than delaying it a bit more? ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2026, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/self-driving-cars-are-still-decades-away/798499/2987 "2026-06-29T15:38:04Z")
Good questions and I have no idea. It’s just out to early testers now. It’s v14 so it should have all of the v14 feature set. I very highly doubt they just slapped a v14 label on the older software. There are various criteria for what constitutes v14. If that was the case, they could have done that a year ago. It should do all of the v14 stuff. As for it working for future versions, I very highly doubt that too. There’s no way but this buys at least a year or two of more of those old cars getting wrecked and falling out of service. Remember that the important distinction is it only applies to HW3 vehicles that purchased lifetime FSD which is a very small percentage of them. They did not make a similar promise to HW4 vehicles and more recently got rid of the option to buy lifetime FSD altogether. V15 is supposed to come out in two to four quarters and will work on HW4 which includes the taxis. The claim is that it will have higher level real time reasoning. HW5 is a couple years out. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/self-driving-cars-are-still-decades-away/798499.md?page=148) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/self-driving-cars-are-still-decades-away/798499.md?page=150)