Elon Musk has backed a claim by a Tesla investor that the EV maker is uniquely positioned to address one of the auto industry’s most complex challenges. It is simultaneously developing self-driving technology and achieving large-scale production. The discussion began with a post on X (formerly Twitter) by user Sawyer Merritt, who argued that competitors face complementary but opposite obstacles in the race for autonomous vehicles. Merritt, who is an investor in Tesla and an owner of a Y model, noted that legacy automakers like Ford and GM have experience mass-producing cars but cannot develop advanced self-driving solutions. Conversely, tech companies like Google, which owns Waymo, are skilled at developing self-driving technology but lack experience in mass-producing vehicles. Responding to this analysis, Tesla CEO Musk wrote: “Exactly”.
What Tesla investor said about this auto industry ‘problem’
In his X post, Merritt wrote: “Legacy automakers like Ford and GM know how to mass manufacture cars — but not how to solve self-driving.
Waymo has to source cars from a third party (their 6th-gen hardware is on Zeekr vehicles). Ford and GM will likely have to license self-driving tech from another company.”
What Elon Musk said about Tesla’s self driving technologies
In Tesla’s latest earnings call, Musk said he believes many investors and others still don’t understand what’s about to happen with the company’s Robotaxi technology.
“People just don’t quite appreciate the degree to which this will take off — where it’s honestly — it’s going to be like a shock wave. We have millions of cars out there that, with a software update, become full self-driving cars and, you know, we’re making a couple million a year,” Musk said at the earnings call.
Earlier, Musk had said that Tesla’s electric vehicles will eventually earn money for their owners by transporting passengers or goods without drivers. However, while Alphabet’s Waymo and Baidu’s Apollo Go are expanding their robotaxi services, Tesla remains limited to small pilot programs.
In July, Musk said during an earnings call that Tesla could offer autonomous ride-hailing to “probably half the population of the US by the end of the year.” Despite this, Tesla has not yet released cars that can safely operate without a human driver ready to take control.
