There has long been debate over Tesla’s camera-only approach to self-driving, compared to the use of Lidars on Waymos, but it appears that Waymo has won itself a bit of a victory for the moment.
Just three months ago, Elon Musk made a bold claim about the limitations of lidar and radar technology in autonomous vehicles. “Lidar and radar reduce safety due to sensor contention. If lidars/radars disagree with cameras, which one wins? This sensor ambiguity causes increased, not decreased, risk. That’s why Waymos can’t drive on highways. We turned off the radars in Teslas to increase safety. Cameras ftw,” Musk posted on X on August 25, 2025.
However, Waymo has now proven that prediction incorrect. On November 12, the company announced it is welcoming riders to use its autonomous vehicles on freeways across the San Francisco Bay Area, Phoenix, and Los Angeles. The expansion represents a significant milestone for the Google-backed autonomous driving company, which has been steadily building its real-world capabilities over millions of miles of testing.
Waymo’s Highway Expansion
The new freeway service allows riders to take autonomous trips on highways for the first time, making journeys like airport runs to Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix or commutes from Downtown LA to Culver City possible entirely via self-driving vehicle. Waymo is rolling out freeway access gradually to a growing number of public riders, with plans to expand the capability to Austin, Atlanta, and additional cities in the future.
Alongside the freeway announcement, Waymo also expanded its service territory in the Bay Area, now offering rides from San Francisco all the way down to San Jose, including curbside pickup at San Jose Mineta International Airport. The company emphasized that the expansion is built on extensive real-world performance, comprehensive testing, and close collaboration with safety officials.
The Technology Divide
The contrast between Waymo and Tesla’s approaches to autonomous driving has become one of the defining debates in the self-driving industry. Tesla relies exclusively on cameras and neural networks, with Musk arguing that vision-based systems mirror how humans drive and that additional sensors create conflicting data that compromises safety. The company removed radar from its vehicles in pursuit of this camera-only vision system.
Waymo, by contrast, employs a sensor fusion approach that combines cameras, lidar, and radar. The lidar sensors use laser pulses to create detailed 3D maps of the vehicle’s surroundings, providing precise depth perception and the ability to detect objects in challenging conditions like darkness or fog. Waymo’s engineers argue that redundant sensor systems provide critical backup and validation, allowing the vehicle to cross-reference data from multiple sources to make safer decisions.
The highway deployment suggests Waymo’s multi-sensor strategy can handle the complex dynamics of freeway driving—lane changes at high speeds, merging traffic, and rapid decision-making—despite Musk’s assertion that sensor ambiguity would prevent such capability. As autonomous vehicle technology continues to evolve, the success or failure of these competing philosophies will likely shape the future of self-driving transportation.