Andrew Miller

Most of the time, it works just fine.

But Waymos have no safety operators in them.

There's no human controlling the vehicle in the vehicle.

Tesla does.

In Austin.

In Austin.

And those safety drivers have to intervene an awful lot.

So, so far, the safety record of Tesla is not nearly what Waymos was when it was at this stage of its journey.

Right.

But, I mean, it's always tough in early days.

Will they be able to get better?

I hope so, but they've got to do it quickly.

So we learned about this because Waymo was called to the Senate to testify.

So we got an inside look at this.

Waymo says that what they have is remote assistance.

So what that means is that it is not like someone playing a video game where they've got a fake steering wheel in front of them and they jack into the car and then drive it and then jack out and the car computer takes over.

It's more like laying digital breadcrumbs.

The car isn't sure what to do.

It encounters a situation that is confusing to it because there's a bunch of traffic cones, but a few of them are knocked over and that's sufficiently unusual that the car is not uncertain.

So it calls a human remote assistant who looks at it and says, oh, it's safe to proceed.