Jonathan V. Last
Editor at The Bulwark who writes the Triad, a daily column on Donald Trump, Republican politics and the news cycle, and answers reader questions in the Triad Ma...
“Elon's going to lose the self-driving race too. The way that Waymo is eating his lunch is because Elon cheaped out on LiDAR and thought that he could do everything with camera only and compute.”
The Bulwark · Policy · November 2026
Context
Still on Tesla's troubles after the Cybertruck wind-down, the co-host makes a prediction about autonomous driving. He blames Tesla's camera-only approach and points to Waymo as the winner.
Transcript
Well, oops. Maybe that was.
…was going to go off-roading and take you on all of these adventures, a new golden age of your midlife crisis. And instead, it just couldn't deliver on the very basic functions of being a car, a vehicle. So I don't know. To me, this feels, it feels like almost two on the nose. Okay. Elon's going to
lose the self-driving race too, which we don't have to get into right now, but the way that Waymo is eating his lunch because Elon cheaped out on LiDAR and thought that he could do everything with camera only and compute. You hate to see it. I don't. I love it into my veins.
You mentioned, JVL, that Elon's net worth took a hit. Specifically, Elon, the richest man in the world, lost nearly $80 billion in the trading session on Thursday, according to both the Bloomberg and Forbes trackers. The Bloomberg Billionaires Index put Elon Musk's one-day drop at about 80 billion…
One Tesla. The three has sold well. Yes. Good luck with that long term.
But compared to other American EV makers, definitely blowing everyone else out of the water, although finally facing some more competition. So, yeah. So as
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