Anthony Levandowski, the engineer who co-founded Google’s self-driving car program (now known as Waymo) and has gone on to start an off-road AV startup, hopped on the phone with me after Tesla’s big robotaxi reveal to share his thoughts. And he is bullish on Elon Musk’s vision for Tesla’s and the world’s future, but he’s not without his, albeit small, reservations.
“I think the issue isn’t building the car without a steering wheel, it’s making the software work,” Levandowski told TechCrunch. “There’s a lot of gap between driving around on a track at an amusement park and driving around in Los Angeles traffic. The optimism is there. The realism is what’s coming next, and that will be where the hard part is.”
The engineer agreed with Musk’s vision-only approach to self-driving, rather than using “expensive sensors,” and said full self-driving appears to be in reach. He noted that while Waymo already has fully operational driverless robotaxis in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Phoenix, it’s a “much more engineer-heavy and sensory-heavy approach.”
“But to scale that out to the masses, you need something that’s affordable,” he said. Levandowski noted that he was really looking for Tesla to announce breakthroughs in its FSD software, which it will need if it wants to get to unsupervised FSD by next year.
When it comes to the business model, Levandowski said he loved the idea of the Cybercabs being available for sale eventually.
“You’re putting the power back into the people’s hands, where a small business owner could have, you know, a fleet of 10 cars or 20 cars that they run themselves as their business. It’s a great model for the future where it’s lots of mom and pops, rather than one mega corp that does that.”
The engineer said he agrees with Tesla’s vision of the future overall, but doesn’t expect it to come anytime soon, and certainly not within the timelines Musk sets.
“If you can’t start a webcast on time, maybe your prediction for 2026 is a little ambitious,” Levandowski said, referencing Musk’s stated timeline that the Cybercab would start production in 2026. (Also, the event apparently started late because a guest had a medical emergency, but Musk’s timelines are famously too optimistic.)
Levandowski also said he was bullish on the Optimus robots, which were mingling with guests at the event Thursday.
“But it’s a longer term bullish,” he said. “It’s not bullish this year. It’s a bullish over time…Robots in general are going to be the biggest product. They’re gonna be way bigger than Tesla cars, but they’re much further away than full self-driving cars.”
Wall Street investors did not seem to share Levandowski’s optimism. Tesla shares dropped more than 7% in early trading.