IMHO, this is not too bad! But obviously, coming from the software product industry, everyone knows that building features isn't the same as operating in practice and optimizing based on the use case, which takes a ton of time.
Waymo has a huge head start, and it is evident that the "fully autonomous" robotaxi date is far behind what Elon is saying publicly. They will do it, but it is not as close as the hype suggests.
Thanks for the context, I didn't realize the supervisor sits in the passenger seat in Austin. They do have a kill switch / emergency brake, though:
> For months, Tesla’s robotaxis in Austin and San Francisco have included safety monitors with access to a kill switch in case of emergency — a fallback that Waymo currently doesn’t need for its commercial robotaxi service. The safety monitor sits in the passenger seat in Austin and in the driver seat in San Francisco
Waymo absolutely has a remote kill switch and remote human monitors. If anything Tesla is being the responsible party here by having a real human in the car.
Waymo has a huge head start, and it is evident that the "fully autonomous" robotaxi date is far behind what Elon is saying publicly. They will do it, but it is not as close as the hype suggests.