Tesla and Waymo started out solving problems at different times in a different order. Waymo went to robotaxis first, and then later to a system for personally owned vehicles. Tesla started with personally owned vehicles, and then later to robotaxis.
Waymo’s robotaxi start with safety drivers was 2016 (Source). It wasn’t until 6 years later than they actually started offering driverless rides for a fee to non-employees. Tesla’s equivalent start was June 2025. We’re only a half year in, so Tesla has 5 years for its equivalent milestone.
Tesla started its self-driving for personally owned vehicles in Sept 2020 (Source). We could say Waymo started that in April 2025 (Source). We’re still waiting on both to achieve a level beyond “L2++” as has been coined by Nvidia recently.
One aspect of the robotaxi scaling is time from first city area to enlarged area to next city and then next city, etc. As of today, about 6 years after its first city, Waymo is still only in 5 or 6 cities. Yes, more are coming, and they’re coming faster than they have in the past. Once Tesla gets to its first city, let’s see how long it takes them to get to 5 or 6 cities. Then we’ll have an idea which system scales up faster.
One aspect of the POVs (“Personally Owned Vehicles,” as coined by Waymo-Toyota in the link above) is how many miles between driver interventions. Tesla is at about 800 miles, Waymo-Toyota is at exactly 0 miles. Additionally, Tesla is now at 98% of drives with no critical disengagements, and 70% of drives having no disengagements at all. Waymo-Toyota is at 0%.
We’ll have to wait and see once the Waymo-Toyota partnership offers any product for POVs, then we’ll see which is scaling that faster.
Separately, for L3 service for POVs, Mercedes is in the lead, with approvals for parts of Nevada and California on certain roads under very specific conditions. I’ve not seen any reporting as to how many vehicles, nor how many L3 miles have been logged, not any incidents under those miles. If Tesla or Waymo-Toyota make an L3 offering, we can maybe start tracking that data as well.