Nothing quite says "things have moved on" like your former boss publicly declaring your opinions obsolete. That's essentially what happened this week when Elon Musk responded to comments from Andrej Karpathy, Tesla Inc. (TSLA)'s former AI director, about the company's autonomous driving progress.
The Spark That Set Off Musk
The exchange started innocuously enough. Yuchen Jin, a user on X, shared details from a conversation with Karpathy about how Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL) (GOOG)'s Waymo stacks up against Tesla's Robotaxi ambitions. According to Jin's account, Karpathy praised both technologies as delivering solid driving experiences, though he noted differences would emerge as each service scales operations. Karpathy had previously compared Tesla's Full Self-Driving system to riding on a magnetic levitation train.
Musk, never one to let a Tesla-related comment slide by unremarked, jumped into the thread with a correction. His former AI chief's perspective was "dated," Musk wrote, because "Tesla AI software has advanced vastly beyond what it was when he left." Then came the bolder claim: Tesla's "intelligence density per GB" is better than its rivals by at least "an order of magnitude." That's tech-speak for saying Tesla's AI accomplishes more with less data, which if true, would be a significant competitive advantage.
Where Tesla Stands in the Robotaxi Race
The timing of this exchange is interesting. Tesla's latest FSD v14 update has earned genuine praise from industry observers for meaningful improvements over earlier versions. The company is also running driverless testing of its Robotaxi, inching toward the fully autonomous operations Musk has long promised. However, there are hints that Tesla's robotaxi rollout might be more modest than originally envisioned, according to tracking by a student monitoring the program.
Meanwhile, Waymo isn't standing still. The self-driving cab service has firmly established itself as the leader in America's robotaxi market, announcing it completed over 14 million paid rides this year. That's not hypothetical testing or supervised driving—those are actual revenue-generating trips. Waymo is also eyeing European expansion, facing competition from Baidu Inc. (BIDU)-backed Apollo Go, which recently entered the UK market alongside partnerships with Uber Technologies Inc. (UBER) and Lyft Inc. (LYFT).
The Broader Context
The debate between Musk and Karpathy highlights a fundamental split in autonomous vehicle strategies. Tesla has bet heavily on a camera-based approach with sophisticated AI, while competitors like Waymo rely on more expensive hardware including lidar sensors. Tesla's approach, if it works, could scale faster and cheaper. But Waymo's extensive real-world deployment suggests their method, while more costly upfront, delivers results now rather than tomorrow.
Karpathy left Tesla in 2022, so Musk's point about dated information has some validity—AI development moves fast, and two years is an eternity in this field. Still, the public nature of the rebuttal underscores just how sensitive Tesla remains about its position in the autonomous driving race.
Price Action: According to market data, TSLA slid 0.11% to $485.03 at market close during the after-hours trading session.