The NDA's ended when they were confident enough in their system that the good press would outweigh the bad.
So essentially we're comparing footage from Waymo when it was at the end stages of its development to footage from Tesla at the early stages of its development.
I don't know if they're wildly different at this point. Sitting in the shotgun seat, comparing the latest FSD vs the latest Waymo, on the same pickup and dropoff in San Francisco, I couldn't tell much difference. On the one hand, Waymo definitely chooses slower, quieter roads, and weird pickup/dropoff points - which means it's a slower ride. On the other hand, most people don't have access to actually try FSD so they rely on videos which are typically older FSD versions and spliced to only show "highlights" instead of being a raw 20 minute ride footage video.
I don't think we'll actually know until Tesla has an actual robotaxi product. When Cruise had one, most people who had tried both Cruise and Waymo said Waymo was better. That was my opinion as well.
> Sitting in the shotgun seat, comparing the latest FSD vs the latest Waymo, on the same pickup and dropoff in San Francisco, I couldn't tell much difference.
Well, except for the fact that one is doing it completely driverless. And it has to do that every single time without having the luxury of a driver to prevent accidents.
Big difference in reliability, which makes them wildly different.
There were no interventions, so both of them were doing it completely driverless.
We can't make an apples to apples comparison until Tesla also has a robotaxi product, but even then there will be questions around the role of remote operators.
> There were no interventions, so both of them were doing it completely driverless.
Well, no. A Tesla doesn't operate without a driver's supervision, so it can't be driverless. It did that particular drive without intervention, that's it. The stats [1] clearly show it's nowhere near capable of doing it without a driver in the seat. Community tracker puts them at 30 miles per disengagement.
Meanwhile Tesla hasn't required NDA's except for employees running internal builds.