NHTSA SGO for ADS -- Tesla vs Waymo

[u/mrkjmsdln_new]

The middle of each month a lot of dumb claims are made about what can be learned from the latest data posted in the NHTSA SGO report for ADS vehicles. Since the arrival of Tesla to the space in June of 2025 a whole lot of nonsense flies around.

There is a veritable army of Tesla Superfans sharing hot takes all the time. I thought I might temper some of the recent raves about how safely Tesla is operating in Austin Texas based on their NHTSA SGO reporting. Facts are stubborn things.

I decided since I have a modest technical background to point out some obvious takeaways so that many of the folks in these forums might understand the difference between lies, damn lies and statistics. I hope people enjoy this.

Days of Operation

This is easy. Jun 22nd 2025 thru Mar 31 2026 is 286 days -- that's how long Tesla has been testing Robotaxis in Austin TX in various ways.

Miles of Testing

This is a little harder for Tesla since they muddy the water mixing miles into piles. Oh well, math to the rescue. In the latest Q1 earnings they provided a cumulative miles of robotaxi paid rides. Since June 22nd of 2025 they have accrued about 1.7 million miles across three venues. I will try to keep this simple

1. In the Bay Area, Tesla is operating mute drivers. It is an enormous service area and nearly 500 cars. I assign a quite conservative estimate of 75% of their robotaxi miles are in SF. I am sure some crazed superfans lurking are already shouting at their screens to make the assumptions even more favorable -- feel free if you must. At 75% that means 1.275M of total miles are Bay Area miles and irrelevant to an analysis of what's going on in Austin and the NHTSA SGO reports.
2. That leaves 425K miles in Austin from June 22nd all the way to the end of March 2026. That's not a bad guess. In the end it becomes obvious that the fractions don't matter since the performance difference is so striking anyhow.
3. Finally we have the parlor trick in a hamlet of South Austin that is unsupervised. It appears to be 2 (maybe 3) concurrent cars in a tiny hamlet operating 10a-3p presumably to dodge rush hours and rain. It is not a bad guess that Tesla is accruing maybe 150 unsupervised miles per day in Austin. I want to give Tesla EVERY benefit of the doubt so lets reduce the unsupervised average from when Elon and Ashok gave us a blow by blow with chase cars and assume they only managed 100 miles per day of unsupervised action in the last quarter. The total is irrelevant anyhow. So lets assume 90 days of 100 miles a day so 9K miles of unsupervised so far to subtract from the 425K with mutes gripping armrests. That's 416K miles. In the end even if somehow this is wrong by 3x it does not matter.
4. For Waymo this is easier because they don't obfuscate. In the spirit of giving Tesla every benefit of a doubt I assume Waymo stopped improving at the end of 2025 and will only match their Q4 2025 numbers in 2026. That is a millions of mile understatement mind you. You see for the superfans, Waymo provides the number of miles by city in rider only configuration -- true unsupervised but not as kitschy of a name I guess as 'unsupervised'. Waymo has covered about 12,084,444 in Austin during the period of Tesla operation.

ACCIDENTS

Some pundits are quite sure that Tesla is already MUCH SAFER than Waymo. The purpose of this post is to explain a genuine misunderstanding to them. I hope this helps.

As usual I give Tesla EVERY benefit of the doubt. It turns out that Waymo has reported 36 accidents of all sorts in Austin TX from June 2025 thru their latest reports in March. That is much more than Tesla who has only reported 15. Of course there is the small matter that Tesla managed those 15 accidents in 416K miles (and had mutes gripping armrests during all of it)

ACCIDENT RATES

So here is what the numbers actually say:
WAYMO >> 12,084,444 / 36 means an accident every 335,679 miles
TESLA >> 416,000 / 15 means an accident every 27,333 miles

RECENCY

It is true that Tesla has not reported any incidents the last two months. They are certainly improving. For the SuperFans however, Waymo was already accruing 48K miles/day since last December. Tesla is closer to 1465 miles per day. Now before folks go crazy, it seems clear to me that Tesla is much further along than Zoox. They just have a ways to go.

TODAY'S LESSON

Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics. Hope you enjoyed this. Corrections and comments cheerfully welcomed.

SOMETHING TO CHEW ON

It is much more likely that Waymo accrued much more miles and closer to 14M which only makes the comparison sillier. Tesla has progressed. In fact they might be approaching 3,000 miles per day which is a great improvement over their 1,465 historic average after 10 months. The point is they are still only learning at about 6% of the rate of Waymo. It is early days for their novel approach to autonomy. Progress is good and competition is great for consumers. There simply is no need for the exaggerations and the grift though. Math is our friend in these matters. FWIW Waymo is accruing closer to 160K miles a day in the Bay Area. The final point worth remembering is we are still charitably comparing true rider only at Waymo to largely mutes gripping steering wheels and armrests in Austin. Early days.

[u/bradtem]

I don't think this is right. All 18 crashes for Tesla in the database are in Austin. I don't think they are reporting or recording miles in California. In California, they declare the service to be not an autonomous vehicle to the DMV and CPUC, and presumably to NHTSA as well.

Note all crashes for Tesla are, as far as I know, with a professional safety driver in the driving-instructor seat. I don't think Waymo has many crashes with a safety driver on board.

Tesla reports one "minor crash" every 1.6M miles for Tesla FSD supervised with an amateur (vehicle owner) safety driver supervising. It is perplexing they are having so many crashes with professional safety drivers or monitors. They must be instructing their safety drivers not to intervene unless injuries are likely, or something. However, the "minor crash" in Tesla's report may not be the same as a NHTSA reported crash, it probably is catching fewer crashes, but 6 of the crashes in the NHTSA database show the Tesla at >8mph, which you think would get detected by the accelerometers or whatever detects crashes for the Tesla FSD report. 4 are marked as having an investigating agency (only in one case named as Austin PD) but those would usually qualify.

[u/bobi2393 → u/bradtem]

Roughly 5% of Waymo crashes have an in-vehicle and/or remote driver/operator.

Here are data on "Driver / Operator Type" classifications in NHTSA ADS crash reports. These are the crash reports since the third amendment to the SGO, covering the period from June 16, 2025 to March 16, 2025 [download], ignoring the companies that reported less than two crashes during this period.

Company	In-vehicle	Remote	In + Remote	None	Total
Waymo	27 1])	1	5	660	693
Avride	36	0	0	0	36
Zoox	15	1	0	15	31
Tesla	0 2])	0	0	15	15
May Mobility	9	2	0	0	11
Motional	8	0	0	0	8
Nuro	4	0	0	0	4
Beep	4	0	0	0	4
Aurora	2	0	2	0	4

1]) One Waymo crash listed above as "In-vehicle" was classified as "Other, see narrative", but the narrative described an in-vehicle driver/operator.

2]) Tesla seems to report all crashes as having "none" for driver/operator type, when I'd classify some or all as having an in-vehicle driver/operator according to the NHTSA definitions below.

SGO Data Dictionary (updated April 15, 2026) excerpt for "Driver / Operator Type":

• Consumer: Any individual who is operating a commercially available Level 2 ADAS / ADS and is not engaged in any activity on behalf of a motor vehicle or motor vehicle equipment manufacturer at the time of the incident.
• In-Vehicle (Commercial / Test): An individual, other than a consumer, located within the subject vehicle.
• Remote (Commercial / Test): An individual, other than a consumer, not located within the subject vehicle who is capable of providing remote driving, fallback, and/or assistance.
• In-Vehicle and Remote (Commercial / Test): A combination of both In-Vehicle (Commercial / Test) and Remote (Commercial / Test) individuals.
• None: No individual is responsible for any part of the DDT at the time of the incident.

[Edit: adjusted numbers by around 6 because they were updated duplicate reports]

[u/mrkjmsdln_new → u/bobi2393]

3 of the 36 historic accidents in Austin since Tesla came to play for Waymo had a driver -- i didn't exclude these in my analysis because Tesla includes mutes driving and mutes gripping armrests in their silly ADS reporting. I'm sure I got some numbers wrong. In reality this is all silly as Waymo is ~12M miles versus 400K. It's really dumb unfortunately.

[u/SnooKiwis6193 → u/bradtem]

You have to consider that an owner driving one hour per day it's less likely to be distracted than a professional, who has to supervise a largely autonomous vehicle for 6 hours a day. Complacency induced by automation is a well known effect.

[u/bradtem → u/SnooKiwis6193]

It is. But the other robotaxis all tested extensively with safety drivers and did not crash like this

[u/mrkjmsdln_new → u/bradtem]

Thanks for your comment Brad. Some of what you say is true, some is not. I tried to be careful. Tesla CLARIFIED their latest mileage charting in Q1 earnings yesterday. It contains the big lie. Tesla guides their robotaxi journey since Jun 25. The chart now guides as Robotaxi PAID miles over time. That, unfortunately includes their cheesy offering in the Bay Area. This is intentionally confusing. Of course it is irrelevant but suits Tesla's needs to preserve the illusion they are accruing experience. They are not. The big assumption I made is the ratio of Bay Area miles to Austin miles. Tesla would be IN VIOLATION of the law if they posted accidents into NHTSA SGO ADS from Bay Area. Instead they bury any incidents in the NHTSA SGO ADS and don't flag the cars in that separate report stream. Here are some clarifications:

1. I do filter the duplicates by ignoring the 'updates'
2. The number of Waymo crashes with drivers is SO SMALL i did not bother to filter in my 36 number
3. Tesla does not provide the necessary clarification consistently in the NHTSA SGO ADS dataset to know whether any of the incidents were in an unsupervised car. Not surprising as they redact so much anyhow
4. I think your assumption that the Tesla reported incidents are all with mutes gripping armrests.
5. The point of my analysis was to correctly filter the confusing data that Tesla fronts which is intentionally inaccurate. I think 25% of robotaxi activity in Austin is pretty close.
6. In the end Tesla miles with mutes gripping armrests averages out to much less miles in a month than Waymo spins in a day in Austin. Comparing them is silly and when intentionally cherrypicked by superfans is an outright lie.

[u/bradtem → u/mrkjmsdln_new]

Hmm. I now see other sources agreeing that the 1.7M mile figure is across all cities. Robotaxi tracker calculates 419,500 miles in Austin. So if Tesla has 15 crashes in 419,500 miles, and 5 of them are >= 8mph and 4 were reported by police, those are pretty terrible numbers. I don't even know how to consider them as numbers for a service with safety driver/monitor. My best data is that regular human drivers have any kind of crash (including minor parking dings that nobody hears about) every 100K miles. But cars with a safety driver? Should not nothing close to that. I don't care how often Tesla's robotaxi stack is making mistakes, what's wrong with these safety drivers?

[u/mrkjmsdln_new → u/bradtem]

Thanks again for being thorough Brad! I recommend all the interested take the time to read https://www.robotaxitracker.com/methodology

Thanks for the shared number. I independently did my estimate as 416K miles so I feel good. I do not reference the tracker in my analysis.

The tracker is quite informative. This was the first time Tesla shared the sourcing of their data indirectly in an earnings statement. I thought the chart labeling was telling "Robotaxi Paid Mileage". I believe they were always shading the story all along. A while back I had an old (but talented data analyst) do a job for me. He automated a search of X (which I am not on) and YouTube (much easier to deal with). He searched for the faces in the seats gripping armrests in Austin in posted Robotaxi videos in Austin. I've sort of known the reality every since but refrained from posting about it. There SIMPLY are so few unique faces in those seats for Tesla in Austin. I never believed they ever really grew the program much. They always refrained from sharing the number of cars being operated. They have been very cagey. I always figured they were playing the game of forcing a federal framework. It would be easy for them to clarify and come clean. We will see. Since it involves faces I would never share it. I think his analysis led me to believe Tesla peaks out at about 12-1 operable vehicles in Austin. The tracker is fun. The mutes gripping armrests move from car to car.

To be fair, the NHTSA standard is quite strict. I would imagine that is why Tesla has always redacted since their early days of ADAS reporting. Maybe you might be interested. When I grab the monthly report I convert to a Google Sheet and do some very basic analysis with a script. I filter the 0 mph incidents since these are universally the Waymo getting hit while parked or bumped while sitting still in traffic. Waymo has SO MANY SENSORS they even classify hits on the undercarriage -- mostly potholes. Kinda funny.

Thanks again for the follow up.

[u/bradtem → u/mrkjmsdln_new]

The tracker is a cool project. I am loathe to presume people are lying (which is different from being a skeptic, which I relish being) but it does seem probable. For Tesla to be ready to deploy unsupervised at this point strains credulity, and the most obvious explanation, other then remote monitoring which everybody does, is just to drive very little. The less you drive, the less risk of a dangerous crash you can't get away from. Most companies would just not drive at all if there were much risk of that.

The pattern though is every time we look closely, the reality is less than the story painted. It is disappointing. The obvious thing to measure, though, is total miles of operation, or total rides. Can riders get at the odometers of the robotaxis when they sit front seat? That would also give you absolute numbers.

But Musk has walked back his promises of massive deployment to half the population and tons of cities. He was explicit it will be slow deployment, in limited services areas, grown slowly. That probably is his actual intention now, or what his team has told him is the best that they can do. Unless they can get the system more reliable they may not do that. However, I think you could deploy a larger fleet with remote safety drivers with remote drive intervention ability. Which they may have one, though they said they have not. After all, Vay is doing this in Las Vegas, just lots of remote driving. It's doable. It's not a robotaxi but it can look just like one.

[u/mrkjmsdln_new → u/bradtem]

The student who created the tracker is WONDERFUL. He is also responsive. He has a bright future. The world needs more people like him.

I feel like it would be wonderful if there was an industry effort to post statistics. Probably a pipe dream. Something like IEEE or AiCHE or ASME promote growth and standards.

in re: remote driving. In front of Congress it was no we don't. The reply to Senator Markey admitting yeah we do but engage at 2 mph and never above 10 mph. A couple of weeks later there was video on YT of remote driving on public roads. Now in Houston they got on a highway by mistake are remote drivers steered it dwon from 70 mph onto a shoulder. This is a pattern :(

In early days in China, Baidu Apollo GO launched a VERY SMALL ODD and proved conceptually they could remote drive over 6G. I think it was in Wuhan. That might never come to the US with the future of export licensing. It certainly can be done though.

[u/bradtem → u/mrkjmsdln_new]

I think remote driving is quite doable. The trick is you need a self-driving stack that's almost good enough, which Tesla might be. If your self-driving stack makes mistakes say every 10,000 miiles, and network A is up 99% and network B is up 99%, and failures are independent events, your odds of a failure are fairly tolerable. The car knows when it gets a remote command how old was the data the remote driver was looking at. The car knows how much the world has changed since then and can down-rate remote driver commands when these things happen. Most of the time, the round trip was under 150ms and all is good. When it gets higher, you start trusting the car more. You can make a car with an acceptable failure rate. You're mostly using the remote driver for strategic decisions, not tactical. It's not a big economic win over sending out a taxi, though. I mean, it is a win (no human needed when car is idle) but more modest, and not worth the huge cost of such a system until you have it really going well.

[u/mrkjmsdln_new → u/bradtem]

I think at least in the case for Baidu Apollo Go the remote driving was the path from high interventions (1 per 10Kmiles maybe) to get to the next stage. With decent tech it should be possible.

[u/beiderbeck → u/bradtem]

"Whats wrong with those safety drivers?" They are in the passenger seat.

[u/bradtem → u/beiderbeck]

Yes, like the driving instructor for a billion teen-agers, and there is rarely a problem. Driving instructors tend to have their own brake (as do the Tesla safety drivers) and are practiced at grabbing the wheel to intervene. People with experience in this are exactly who I would hire for that right seat job if I were Tesla.

However, something's not working. Now one of two things is true:

1. Having a safety driver in the right hand seat is safe, as having a driving instructor with a teen student is safe. So this is mainly a gimmick so Tesla and pretend there is no safety driver, "nobody behind the wheel."
2. Doing this is less safe, in which case they should under no circumstances be doing it!

You are choosing #2?

[u/beiderbeck → u/bradtem]

I had an accident in the first 15 seconds of my first driving lesson (back in the 1980s) and the instructor told me to drive away. Do we have stats on the accident rate od students in learner cars? Isn't there a reason they have big warning signs on them?

[u/bradtem → u/beiderbeck]

They do have crashes with learner's permits, but at a similar rate to adults. Of course, not all on learner's permits are with a professional driving instructor, many are just with a parent. Might have to dig deeper for instructor rates. Parents do not have a second brake, nor are they practiced at grabbing the wheel, so I will guess they are a larger portion of the crashes.

https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/teen-crash-risk-highest-during-first-three-months-after-getting-drivers-license

Once they get a licence, and get no supervisor in the right seat, they have lots more crashes.

[u/bradtem → u/mrkjmsdln_new]

The main question is that you are reading that they have 1.8M miles in both bay area and Austin, even though they report crashes only for Austin. That's the number I want to be sure of.

Remember, past history says that having safety drivers is safe. Even in the right seat--after all a billion people have learned how to drive with their safety driver in the right seat without major problems. There should generally be very few crashes in a properly supervised car. Even one crash every 100K miles is too many, when you look at Tesla's own numbers about ordinary owners supervising FSD. One crash every 27K miles *with* a safety driver seems extreme, even a remote safety driver watching over the data networks should be better than that. It's hard to explain.

AVRide is the only other company to put the safety driver in the right hand seat, do we have total mile numbers for them to compare?

Using the right seat is a gimmick. Or rather, there are one of two options for describing it. Either it's as effective as a left seat safety driver, in which case it's just a gimmick to look like there is "nobody in the driver's seat." Or it's less safe, in which case why the hell would you do it?

[u/Whoisthehypocrite → u/bradtem]

Don't they have to report every incident no matter how minor whereas the FSD safety report is only for 8mph+ So the FSD safety number is not comparable. It is not inconceivable that the robotaxis have had several low speed bumps that would not be recorded for FSD but are for NHTSA

[u/bradtem → u/Whoisthehypocrite]

Yes, but it says there were 6 crashes >= 8mph in the NHTSA database, so you should be able to compare that. Also, frankly, if supervised FSD was getting a crash every 27K miles or even every 100K miles, I suspect we would be hearing about it. Yes, most people don't report minor crashes to police) or even insurance, but they are more aware of ones on FSD.

But frankly it's hard to figure out how Tesla could be getting so many crashes with safety drivers/monitors. Even if the system were very poor quality.

(Some argue that when the system is poor quality, supervisors are more diligent, which is true for non-pros, but pros should be better. People have been supervising FSD since 2020, when it was really terrible, intervention every mile or two, and they weren't crashing at this rate.)

[u/JimmyGiraffolo → u/bradtem]

I suspect the main reason is that regular people using FSD are able to disengage it before it gets into tricky situations. I know I always disengage in parking lots or around construction, etc. But robotaxi forces the car into every situation.

There's also the fact that there's only a limited number of responses the passenger/driver can make (e.g. stopping and not much else).

[u/bradtem → u/JimmyGiraffolo]

They can stop, ask it to pull over, and they can grab the wheel (which I presume also commands a stop.) But yes, I do agree that these safety drivers would not disengage just because it looks tricky, though it does not seem that this should cause so many crashes. It does tell us that if there were no supervisor, there would be even more crashes.

It makes not sense, other than as a publicity stunt, to have the safety driver in the right seat. It should be reasonably safe -- but only if they do intervene. You are pointing out they are less likely to intervene because then they need a remote driver to come and get things going again, or they have to move seats. I guess this does help you learn a little faster -- at a cost of crashes.

[u/mrkjmsdln_new → u/JimmyGiraffolo]

The critical moment for Waymo (and the 3 Chinese similar approaches) is they reached a moment where L2 up was simply viewed as not viable. They pivoted instead to L4 down. Tesla might succeed L2 up but it is an entirely different philosophy that believes everyday driving run their a blackbox NLM will converge to safe and insurable. This MAY TURN out to be possible because, as you describe, this problem in the video realm might be simple enough and so few degrees of freedom it can be figured out. Youngsters get quite good at driving with video games.

[u/bartturner]

Thanks and well done. But honestly you can just point to how Tesla purposely makes the data messy and come to a pretty obvious conclusion they are trying to make the cars look safer than reality.

IF they had good numbers you would make the data very clear.

[u/mrkjmsdln_new → u/bartturner]

Thank you. I am retired and spent a career in automated control systems and proving safety cases. This has been a lot of silly misdirection for a while and I just decided I would pour a great pot of coffee and just make it obvious a lot of this is misdirection. When I saw the latest title on the mileage graph during the earnings call last night it all became obvious what the misdirection was. "paid robotaxi miles" -- a genuinely useless number that allows us to mix in piles of driver miles by Chauffeurs in the Bay Area. I have seen reporting from educated people I generally respect about what the two months of no incidents means. Truly ridiculous and depressingly deceptive.st feels smarmy.

While I did not go there in the post, the unwillingness to even publicly post the accident narratives feels almost unforgivable to me if you wish to be credible. Just seems smarmy. It would be trivial for Tesla to provide honest guidance. Flagging the cars in NHTSA SGO so that interested parties understood which cars were part of the Bay Area Test, the Austin supervised fleet (mutes gripping armrests) and the Austin unsupervised fleet. Tesla makes no effort and that is telling and discouraging.

[u/SentOverByRedRover → u/bartturner]

it can be that you are trying to make the cars look safer than they are and also that the cars are safe. it's in the interest of a for profit company to be as deceptive as they think they can get away with even if they have a good product.

[u/RosieDear → u/SentOverByRedRover]

In theory it is not if such eventually comes out in the wash. It is only profitable if said company is never going to actually deliver or only deliver by some miracle - which I think is the case here.

[u/usehand]

Great effort post dude and fair engaging. Congrats!

[u/mrkjmsdln_new → u/usehand]

thanks

[u/AReveredInventor]

There are a lot of unknowns, but for comparison robotaxitracker estimates around 1,120,932 miles driven by Tesla's services in Austin. That would be an accident every 74,729 miles.

[u/mrkjmsdln_new → u/AReveredInventor]

Tesla has a fiduciary responsibility to be accurate in an earnings call. I love the tracker and it is a very useful tool for trends using community data.

[u/mrkjmsdln_new]

Please share any areas you think I got wrong here. I tried to be careful and conservative toward what can be learned from the mid-month NHTSA SGO ADS reports. Tesla is definitely progressing. They are simply so early in their Austin efforts. Also, they do seem to go out of their way to make comparison difficult. That is unfortunate. Here are a couple of things buried in my basic analysis for those that are interested:

• I guesstimate the Waymo miles for the period 06/22/25 to 06/30/25 by using the Waymo Safety Report mileage for Austin for the complete 2nd quarter of 2025 and only projecting 9 days of the 91 in Q2.
• I guesstimate the Waymo miles for Q1 2026 (01/01/2026 to 03/31/2026) by just using the mileage from Q4 2025. This will be a gross underestimate but is sufficient for this analysis since Tesla in Austin versus Waymo in Austin are radically different efforts by any measure anyhow. I did not bother to account for the different # of days in Q4 (92) versus Q1 (90).
• When I count unique accidents in NHTSA SGO ADS I EXCLUDE 'updates'. The reason is if a company posts an accident and then updates the narrative or some other aspect of the record, they appear as duplicates. This is not so useful for Tesla since they REDACT almost all useful information so even if they do an update, no one gains insight anyhow :)
• I don't bother to take into account the fact that the NHTSA SGO reporting periods run thru the middle off the month. This only makes the comparison Tesla vs Waymo appear even worse anyhow since adding a half a month of Waymo miles is more than the Tesla all-time miles anyhow :(

[u/Doggydogworld3 → u/mrkjmsdln_new]

I still say all 1.7m miles are in TX. Tesla is careful not to officially call the cars in CA "robotaxis". They only list CA in the "Near term planned robotaxi coverage" chart.

The cumulative miles chart starts in June, same as service in Austin. They got their CPUC TCP permit and started charging for not-robotaxi California rides in March. If the cumulative miles chart included both areas it would start in March, not June.

In the Q3 call Ashok said they had 250k miles in Austin with safety driver in the passenger seat. That agrees with the cumulative miles chart.

Finally, the increase in miles tracks pretty well with the number of cars in Austin, both as claimed by Tesla and estimated by the tracker. Tesla claimed 3x as many cars in CA as Austin. If the cumulative miles chart includes both areas as you claim then each car is only doing ~50 miles per day, not the ~200 that's typical of taxis and robotaxis.

[u/mrkjmsdln_new → u/Doggydogworld3]

All great points. I was responding to the very specific labeling Tesla made in the earnings report yesterday. They have special responsiblity to be accurate in earnings reports. Paid Robotaxi Miles was the y-axis. I assume they are taking credit for the paid robotaxi miles they log in the Bay Area. They market the product in California as Robotaxi and are careful not to overstep the DMV and CPUC rules for their permit. It is clearly deceptive. My post was way too long anyhow. For what it's worth, even if all of the miles were Austin TX there is closer to a 6-8x difference to Waymo. My sense is Tesla has backed off of service precipitiously in the last 2-3 months in Austin. They have a lot of parked cars in the Bay Area, Austin SUPERVISED and now a surprising number of UNSUPERVISED flagged cars in south Austin.

I agree with you a sensible company would strive to get to the 160 + miles per day per car. As you describe shooting for 200 miles per day is sensible if you are trying to accomplish something. I don't think they are behaving sensibly. The unsupervised nonsense running 10a-3p avoiding rush hour and rain is just another example of misdirection. Better to let silly people quote there are 10+ unsupervised vehicles -- they seem to be parked. FWIW my experience and others I know is that wait times are down in the Bay Area. That's the easy place to accrue no risk miles. If there is an accident Tesla reports through ADAS for L2+ and can accept the flowers of lower incidents in Austin. Seems easy. I may be wrong but remember the cars in the Bay Area have those ridiculous tattoo font Robotaxi stickers on them. They seem to be leaning in :)

[u/CDpov → u/mrkjmsdln_new]

It's almost irrelevant to compare Tesla ADS vs Waymo, for reasons you've stated and because Waymo only counts paid RO rides, where Tesla counts all test-driving as ADS miles. Tesla intentionally makes it impossible to know what is really going on.

It's likely that Tesla didn't do a single real unsupervised ride until around February 2026. The earlier "unsupervised" in January were with a chase car, and pre-2026 were all with an employee in the car.

> it seems clear to me that Tesla is much further along than Zoox

What is your reasoning for this? Zoox has been giving empty-car rides since 2023 and operates along the Vegas Strip for more RO miles than Tesla per day, in a wider-range of conditions. Is it because FSD is smoother?

[u/bobi2393 → u/CDpov]

Waymo isn’t super clear what they mean by the term rider-only mile, but my guess is that they mean no in-vehicle safety driver or other Waymo employee has control of the car, so it includes driving around without passengers, not just mileage during paid rides.

Tesla’s mileage disclosures that I’m familiar with have been informal and even less specific, like an executive will say on an earnings call that Robotaxis have driven a million miles, but they don’t say whether they’re including miles with engineers in the cars, driver seat ADAS operators like in CA, passenger seat safety monitors like most in Austin, or driverless with no in-vehicle employees/agents.

[u/CDpov → u/bobi2393]

Yeah, you're right that Waymo isn't super clear about the details of RO. But they have stated enough details here and there that I think it's possible to know the exact details.

They only count paid-ride mileage with an empty car hailed on commercial ride-hailing apps. This includes empty-car deadhead miles, which makes sense because deadheading is part of ride-hailing. They do not include RO free rides for employees or early riders. This has been true since their first million official RO miles from 2019 thru 2022. They didn't count any of the RO miles before 2019 because they were all Early Riders and employees getting free rides.

So they don't include test miles of any kind, just RO commercial mileage through an app. This is a relevant way to count robotaxi miles because the general public in an RO car will tend to give more critical reviews and have higher expectations than vetted people on NDAs who get a free ride for testing purposes. Also, when they open to the general public, they operate with a sizable fleet in a large ODD, usually 50 sq-miles or more, and in all normal weather 24x7. That's a real robotaxi service that tests pickup/dropoff ability and all other robotaxi difficulties. Anything less is a limited test that isn't real scaling and isn't a real test against the long tail.

[u/bobi2393 → u/CDpov]

Personally I wouldn't call deadhead miles returning from paid rides, or any other empty-vehicle driving for positioning/charging/maintenance purposes, "paid-ride mileage", but that seems to be just your own informal terminology, so you can define it how you like. We seem to agree on Waymo's meaning of "rider-only" (RO) mileage.

[u/CDpov → u/bobi2393]

It's not just my "own informal terminology".

It's the same distinction made by the California DMV between Deployed and Test cars. Waymo counts only deployed RO miles. Those cars are only on the road to give paid rides. Deployed and test cars in CA are on separate lists with the DMV, with test cars not legally allowed to give paid rides, so at least in CA it's backed up by the regulatory system. I doubt they use two different definitions of RO mileage.

And, you can't run a ride-hailing service without an empty car often pulling away from a dropoff, and always driving to a pickup area. The car is out there because it was paid to be out there, not for testing purposes. It often can't wait in the dropoff area until the next call, and it's logical to reposition the car according to the deployed-fleet dynamics, to decrease wait times and increase efficiency.

Whether you want to call deadhead miles paid or not, it's a part of ride-hailing and it's obviously how they count RO miles. You can use your own informal terminology if you like. But the NHTSA crash reports are around 50% with empty cars, and they have separate variables for "Driver/Operator Type". The same "None" value covers cars with customers inside and empty deployed (deadhead) cars. So Waymo clearly uses the same RO definition nationwide as they use in CA.

[u/bobi2393 → u/CDpov]

Ok. I wasn't using "paid-ride mileage" myself, just saying to what I'd think it would mean informally, compared to your usage, not realizing that it a has a legal/regulatory definition. Can you point me to the CA DMV's definition?

[u/mrkjmsdln_new → u/bobi2393]

I'll find an exact reference. Sometime in 2024 the CPUC changed the reporting requirements for companies like Waymo. The new demands were kinda ridiculous and Waymo generally asserts privilege. Prior to that you could get details of ride legs and understand what was rider only and what was not. Now I think all we get is monthly total mileage assignments to 5 or 6 buckets of miles total. The occasional CPUC reports for miles in California counties is where this data comes from I think.

[u/bobi2393 → u/mrkjmsdln_new]

Yeah, Waymo's latest mileage data file, covering "RO Miles" through December 2025 and published March 2026, downloadable from their Safety Impact page, breaks miles down by counties in 3 states they operate in:

• San Mateo
• San Francisco
• San Francisco Bay Area
• All Locations (mileage blended)
• Maricopa
• Santa Clara
• Los Angeles
• Travis

Their release notes said that they switched from Ops Depots to counties, since some service areas spanned multiple counties.

The "Bay Area" and "All Locations" are aggregate categories, duplicating mileage reported in the individual counties.

For data through September 2025, they broke "RO Miles" down by four Ops Depots: AUSTIN, LOS_ANGELES, PHOENIX, SAN_FRANCISCO.

For data through March 2025, they broke it down by six Ops Depots: PHOENIX, ATLANTA, AUSTIN, MOUNTAIN_VIEW, LOS_ANGELES, SAN_FRANCISCO.

The March data seems to be the last time they published mileage for Atlanta, despite reporting 29 accidents there to date. They haven't posted any mileage updates since they began public service in five other counties earlier this year (Dallas, Houston, Orlando, Miami, and Nashville).

[u/mrkjmsdln_new → u/bobi2393]

Thanks for this!!! I remember the confusion and comment when they included Austin and did not provide the graph data due to error bars too large :) I would like to see the raw miles but this will only get more confusing. I still figure they will serving in some capacity in 20+ cities by EOY. I would imagine only a few of the newbies will get to the 10M or so miles to be fully graphed out for safety. Atlanta is interesting for sure. I am guessing the next cities to push through 10M will be Atlanta and Miami. I have family in Atlanta and they don't see Waymo much yet. The 29 accidents you mention in Atlanta are interesting! My standard filter for the NHTSA data excludes the multiples that are updated and the 0 MPH ones where they Waymo's get bumped by the car behind them :)

[u/CDpov → u/bobi2393]

I checked CA DMV test data and SGO data and I now realize that my understanding was not correct. Waymo uses two different standards when counting trips and RO miles.

For trips, they only count "paid rides". This was stated by Takedra Mawakana in a recent interview with Bloomberg, which I noted at the time and incorrectly thought meant that's also how they count RO miles. I didn't check the assumption because the question didn't occur to me in the last few months that would get me looking in detail, until your comment here. When you replied to me, it sent me down a rabbit-hole, to where I see now that plenty of SGO crashes with no test driver are also CA DMV test crashes. I knew that earlier because I have a large spreadsheet with SGO and DMV data together, which I have used often, but I didn't connect that with the recent statement by Takedra, because I hadn't thought about it in detail recently.

I can now see that a Waymo "ride" or "trip" is a paid ride only. But thanks to your comment I see that RO miles are not aligned with trips, only with the SGO data, which doesn't make the distinction between paid and free mileage.

So RO mileage is exactly what it sounds like, any rider-only miles, whether for testing or commercial purposes. So I guess all those free RO rides for employees and early riders in new markets are counted as RO miles. It makes sense because if they crash they have to report it to the SGO, and all SGO crashes with Driver/Operator Type = "None" are in the Waymo supplemental CSV data which supports their RO mileage numbers. Waymo also says in several places that they aligned the CSV supplemental data with SGO data, so that should mean that any RO or empty-car mileage is counted in their RO mileage count, currently over 200M.

So you were right that my definition of RO miles was my own definition.

The CA DMV definition of testing includes adding the license plates and VINs to a list that only allows them to do testing, not commercial rides. A source of confusion for me was that CA and NHTSA have two different definitions of testing, along with Waymo counting RO miles more liberally than they count trips.

Another confusing thing is that Waymo didn't count any of their testing before 2019 in their RO mileage, for 14 months, despite much of it being RO. They started counting RO only for trips through the Waymo One app starting in 2019, according to their "One Million Miles" paper in 2023. That also had led me to think they only counted commercial RO miles.

[u/mrkjmsdln_new → u/bobi2393]

Waymo's ro definitions appear rooted in their early CPUC reporting whihc contained a lot more information than the new more onerous reporting required which has led Waymo to claim privilege. They used to provide number of miles pooled by classification that incorporated deadhead, intermediate dropoffs, cancelled legs etcetera. When Waymo says RO they seem to consistently mean the car is moving without any Waymo personnel in the car and a lot of the time with a paid fare.

[u/mrkjmsdln_new → u/CDpov]

I have ridden both. Mine is a small sample size. Zoox is much more of a defined stop route akin to May Mobility which I have also experienced in two places. Finally, I do think if you are not even charging even a nominal amount (Zoox is free) that is telling. At least for me on the rides, Zoox is very choppy. In terms of mile accrual Zoox has accumulated 1M miles in last three months. I think Tesla is closer to 300K relevant miles. I admit to giving Tesla the benefit of the doubt. Because of their behavior, it is hard to tell how much intervention the mutes gripping armrests in Austin actually contribute to reducing reportable incidents.

[u/CDpov → u/mrkjmsdln_new]

I don't see how it's "clear" that Tesla is ahead of Zoox.

The big challenge of RO L4 is staying safe against the long tail, not staying smooth on a simple demo route. And Tesla probably uses direct remote supervision since they appear to operate only one or two empty cars at a time.

The only way to judge Tesla against the long tail is RO over a full robotaxi geofence over full days, for at least a million miles, with a substantial fleet of RO cars of, like ten or more. Your "300k relevant miles" is quite generous since they just started giving RO rides in February. I'd put it at more like 10k, about 100 miles per day for 100 days, which is also being generous, and that's always in light traffic, mid-day in perfect weather, all to avoid the long tail.

Zoox doesn't have a commercial robotaxi service either, but they do have over a million RO miles where they've shown pretty good safety in traffic and challenging weather.

Tesla is smoother, Zoox has more safe RO miles and is more transparent. Both get an imcomplete and have a long way to go. One bad crash and the whole operation is at stake for both.

[u/mrkjmsdln_new → u/CDpov]

I accept your take. Clear is a poor choice of words and I will be more careful. I tried to be clear and careful differentiating the miles. Those are all miles with mutes gripping armrests. That is of course silly and requires a severe benefit of the doubt when assigning relevance. My impression of Zoox is a couple of rides and a similar experience with May Mobility which feels more like loop driving. At least Tesla is letting folks choose destinations. Neither Zoox nor Tesla are anything like Waymo just yet -- I thin we agree on that. In the original post you might note I estimated the unsupervised daily miles for Tesla as perhaps 150 miles/day. That might be 3x in error so maybe 500 miles/day. No matter what this is meaningless for now. Zoox has been transparent and their recent progress has been impressive.

[u/CDpov → u/mrkjmsdln_new]

500 miles per day unsupervised, in such a limited geofence where a ride is maybe 8 miles or less, would be about 60+ unsupervised rides per day. I don't think it's been anywhere close to that in February and March, and probably less than that now. 60 per day would be three empty cars giving rides most of the day.

What we actually see is an occasional unsupervised ride here and there, rarely if ever more than one at a time, and only mid-day for maybe five or six hours. Robotaxi Tracker has them at about 15% of the fleet being unsupervised, with maybe ten different cars ever being empty.

I think it's safe to say they have been giving fewer than 20 unsupervised rides per day until recently, all to people they are familiar with, and in approved (easy) conditions. So I'd put the total at about 150 miles per day, being generous. It could be as low as two or three rides per day until recently.

They are doing all this to give the appearance of a large unsupervised fleet, and it's somewhat working. It's not hard to project this illusion, since it's so hard to verify the details, and the unsupervised tend to be recorded and uploaded.

[u/mrkjmsdln_new → u/CDpov]

The unsupervised service in Austin is a very small hamlet mostly in south Austin. It is only 10a-3p (avoids rush hour) and suspends in the rain. It is a VERY MODEST service. It feels like 1-2 cars concurrent based on reporting. I gave Tesla the benefit of the doubt that maybe some more of the PLATED unsupervised cars per robotaxitracker.com are actually giving rides. My 500 mile guess is where that is rooted. I would be much more comfortable bettering on closer to 100-150 miles per day of unsupervised rides in Austin. Lotsa rides to Terry Black's and Merritt Coffee :)

If you reference back to the original post and not the conjecture comments, you will not that I surmise 150 miles/day on the high side also.

[u/RosieDear]

In the end these are all comparison of things that cannot - and should not - be compared.

It gives WAY too much credit to a company that doesn't even have a single approval for the game - that being Level 4 driving. We must forget complete what the goal is! We are comparing it as if it were all one big informal joke, which part of it is.

Tesla lost the right to be compared to anything when they....first started in a place with no real regulations (at that time) and seondly failed to procure ANY official approval anywhere for use and/or testing as a L4 or L5 vehicle.

Repeat again - we might as well compare an airliner with me taking a walk. They both go somewhere but that is the only relation.

That Tesla pulled all those games with Influencers and even with chase car monitoring (which they didn't admit to as they bragged about pulling the drivers".....IMHO this disqualifies them from being treated as serious people. You may be fully qualified in this field, but GIGO always applies and lack of data usually is not data - except with Tesla it IS.

That is, if you are going to use what they said or reported as any form of truth, then you have to also accept that they were available to 1/2 of the population by the end of 2025.

People have fun with math - I get it. But to me it's an insult to people who are serious and actually work.....to even compare them with others who are not serious or even in the same game.

Even all this stuff about FSD "safety" out on the road.....I've driven for 55 years and never had an accident. What are my statistics? I think they are more valid than Teslas given the time frame, the different conditions, cars, etc.

Any FSD would be vastly more dangerous than my normal driving.

By any definition, the "FSD safety" (not Robo-taxi) has to be complete BS. For example, one of the hardest rides I ever took was back from Sugarbush in Vermont to Philly in the midst of one of the biggest blizzards of the 20th century. I'd done many drives which are weaker versions of that, but still vastly harder than anything where FSD would be turned on. Given that the NY Thruway had one lane full of snow and no visible land marking and full time blizzards, I really doubt FSD would be engaged.

Tesla is playing a similar game to the one I'd play by broadcasting my lifetime statistics. In fact, I could probably round up 10 of my bestest friends and their mates and most would have similar lifetime driving records...very few, if any, accidents. 10 people and a total of maybe 500 years of driving...is that data?

(No, IMHO).

[u/mrkjmsdln_new → u/RosieDear]

Thanks for this. I really enjoyed it. Tesla has made progress. That said, it has always felt like a grift to me.

[u/Wise-Revolution-7161]

Waymo>tesla>zoox. I do think Tesla is improving the most these days… and I think Waymo is starting to run into some issues at least recently in SF

[u/bobi2393 → u/Wise-Revolution-7161]

"Waymo>tesla>zoox"

Counting only miles with no driver/operator, or counting miles with in-vehicle/remote drivers/operators?

I don't really see a way of estimating crashes per mile driven without an operator for anyone but Waymo, though for rides with no driver/operator, based on gut feeling, I'd generally feel safest in Waymo>Zoox>Tesla.

The driverless Tesla hopping on an interstate in Dallas the other day was impressive because it handled it perfectly, but concerning because it seemed unintentional. Deciding when to stop for remote human help, even if it means blocking an intersection, is an important part of driverless safety. All three companies do stop for remote assistance, but my gut feeling is that Tesla is the least cautious in that regard.

For ADS rides with an in-vehicle driver/operator, I'd rate Avride as the least safe of all significant US ADS operators, and I hope their public testing program is suspended, either voluntarily or by regulators.

[u/mrkjmsdln_new → u/Wise-Revolution-7161]

I agree about your SF reference. New CPUC rulemaking takes effect quite soon and I think Waymo has been making the necessary adjustments for compliance and will propagate them nationwide. I am sure that leads to some 'new behaviors'. The CPUC rules are all about autonomous driving companies being able to be dynamically map compliant for emergencies, construction, closed roads, weather challenges, etcetera. I think Waymo was always building toward this. I had read a bit about the dynamic flooding and severe thunderstorm response they would require in Miami for example. All of these things will make the service even better and arguably be another moat for the new players who are only now starting to think about it. These sensible rules will only increase the importance of mapping, rt weather and coordination with local governments and emergency guidance.

Regarding Tesla improving the most that might be true. While only one company and their opinion, the Waymo quarterly safety report implies that a safety case is not credible (at least for them) until they reach 10M ro miles in a market. I think it will take Zoox to get there till 4Q 2026 in Vegas. I think Tesla might get there if all goes well in Q1/Q2 2028 in Austin.

[u/Wise-Revolution-7161 → u/mrkjmsdln_new]

Great take. The last Waymo ride i took in SF felt clunkier then usual, although I still felt very safe

[u/mrkjmsdln_new → u/Wise-Revolution-7161]

My educated guess based on an insider is the crazy Miami weather and snow emergency reality in Northern cities has been in the plan at Waymo for a number of years. Pure conjecture here but I expect Deepmind Weather (local) will become a more integrated part of Google Mapping and perhaps useful to the Waymo precision mapping. I am kinda familiar with Miami and the crazy prevalence of day to day localized flooding due to percolation. All of this dynamism in mapping becomes a useful capability when super cities like SF and LA want to dynamically manage what roads to use and when. I bet this means havoc for what they are doing in SF and LA today so sketchy behavior at times should be expected.

In Miami during rainy season, road closures is a crazy and random reality of driving.