Bloomberg Publishes Embarrassing Report Comparing Tesla and Waymo Self-Driving Safety Records

Fred Lambert, writing for Electrek:

Bloomberg has just released an embarrassingly bad report about the self-driving space, in which it claimed Tesla has an advantage over Waymo by misrepresenting data. [...] The report compares Tesla’s and Waymo’s self-driving efforts, going so far as to claim that “Tesla is closer to vehicle autonomy than peers.”

Right off the bat this smells fishy, given that Waymo is actually operating self-driving taxis in several cities, and Tesla ... is not.

Steve Man, the Bloomberg Intelligence analyst behind the report, based his report on Tesla’s own quarterly misleading “Autopilot Safety Report.” The report is widely considered to be unserious for several main reasons:

  • Tesla bundles all miles from its vehicles using Autopilot and FSD technology, which are considered level 2 ADAS systems that require driver attention at all times. Drivers consistently correct the systems to avoid accidents.
  • Tesla Autopilot, which is standard on all Tesla vehicles, is primarily used on highways, where accidents occur at a significantly lower rate per mile compared to city driving.
  • Tesla only counts events that deploy an airbag or a seat-belt pretensioner. Fender-benders, curb strikes, and many ADAS incidents never appear, keeping crash counts artificially low.
  • Finally, Tesla’s handpicked data is compared to NHTSA’s much broader statistics that include all collision events, including minor fender benders.

Trusting Tesla’s own safety report is like saying, “Elon Musk says Tesla is ahead, so they must be ahead.”

★ Tuesday, 17 June 2025