Tesla’s upcoming Robotaxi launch on October 10th isn’t happening in a vacuum. The company is up against serious competition and some heavy regulatory scrutiny.

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Waymo, Alphabet’s self-driving unit, has already been running fully autonomous taxis in Phoenix and San Francisco. Alphabet, with a $1.68 trillion market cap, uses LiDAR and radar, which map out surroundings in 3D detail, giving them a precision edge that Tesla doesn’t have.

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Then there’s Cruise, backed by GM, which has a market cap of $43 billion. Cruise is scaling its operations across multiple U.S. cities using a similar sensor-heavy approach, making it a formidable player in the robotaxi space.

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Meanwhile, Tesla’s approach is different. It uses only cameras and AI for navigation. That’s led to a unique data advantage, with billions of miles logged. But it’s also attracted regulatory scrutiny.  Tesla’s Autopilot system has been involved in at least 13 fatal crashes — prompting a recall of 362,000 vehicles in February 2023 to update its Full Self-Driving software.

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Watch the video here

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Tesla Faces Major Challenges in the Robotaxi Market

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