Elon Musk has often said that he aims to help Tesla's rivals promote the adoption of electric vehicles and achieve a sustainable energy economy.
With this in mind, Tesla (TSLA) will open its network of superchargers to owners of Ford Mustang Mach-E and F-150 Lightning models, the two main EVs developed by the Dearborn, Mich., automaker.
Musk and Jim Farley, Ford's (F) chief executive, do not hide their mutual respect. Call them Car Bros -- even if Farley has made clear that his group's main goal is to challenge Tesla as the world leader in electric vehicles. Musk is never stingy with compliments about Ford and its strategy.
"I think Ford’s overall strategy with EVs is smart," the entrepreneur said last month. "The electric F-150 (Lightning) has high demand."
Cruise Is 'Brittle' Self-Driving Technology?
While Musk has warm words for and signed an unprecedented agreement with the legacy carmaker, his view of General Motors (GM), the other legacy automaker, is another story. Sometimes it feels like a cold rivalry. Musk never misses an opportunity to criticize or mock GM as a recent episode illustrates.
A Tesla superfan, Steven Mark Ryan, on June 4 posted a lengthy Twitter message, a commentary to a short video showing a Cruise-developed self-driving vehicle that's stopped in the middle of a street because construction barriers are blocking its path.
For Ryan the image of the Cruise vehicle at a standstill, unable to reverse or turn left or right because the street in front of it is closed, is proof that Cruise's technology rendering its vehicles autonomous is vastly inferior to Tesla's.
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"Generalized autonomy (see Tesla) is 100x harder than the brittle 'self driving' tech we see here," Mark Ryan commented. "Everything perfectly matches the HD pre-map? 'Great, I can do the party trick & drive you around'. Something doesn't match? 'Help Daddy, I'm scared. What do I do? Come get me'."
He went on to praise Tesla's technology.
"Tesla's FSD will scale widely because it is INTELLIGENT and Tesla has (mostly) solved vision (perception, planning and action). A Tesla 'sees' the world, interprets what it sees in REAL TIME and acts accordingly. Everyone else has developed extremely narrow, very brittle technology that won't scale and has potato IQ and is a glorified party trick that requires guard rails and hand holding every step of the way."
Cruise vs. Tesla's Full-Self-Driving System
Musk didn't hesitate to join the discussion and also mock the technology of the Detroit giant, which is led by CEO Mary Barra.
"Yeah, extremely brittle to local conditions & doesn’t scale," the billionaire concurred.
The billionaire suggests that autonomous driving is not about just tightly mapped streets because it will stop working as soon as there's an accident, a parade or a road construction. It should be able to handle unanticipated situations, obstacles and the like. If it can't, it will fail.
He implies that GM's Cruise has failed to anticipate the complexity of the task. In essence, the car should not have been severely tested when faced with something as simple as a road closed due to construction. For Musk, companies should produce a generalized solution to self driving that works anywhere.
Cruise did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Cruise is a GM subsidiary specializing in autonomous technologies. Call it the robotaxi unit. GM is Cruise's majority shareholder, but the legacy carmaker also has partners like Honda (HMC), Walmart (WMT) and Microsoft (MSFT) in this adventure.
Cruise recently received the green light to operate self-driving vehicles in San Francisco 24/7, which gives it a big advantage over its competitors.
A year ago, the firm was among the first to be authorized by the city to operate a robotaxi service, but it was restricted from the hours of 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. and could operate only when there's no “heavy rain, heavy fog, heavy smoke, hail, sleet, or snow.”
"A small portion of our fleet is now serving driverless rides 24 hours a day across all of San Francisco,” Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt said in April.
In addition, Cruise also operates a fleet of robotaxis in Phoenix and Austin.
Tesla for its part continues to improve Full Self Driving, its advanced driving-assistance system, which enables its vehicles to perform many maneuvers on their own but does not make them autonomous. Musk said recently that Tesla cars could be fully autonomous as early as this year.
"Tesla will have sort of a ChatGPT moment, maybe if not this year, I'd say no later than next year," the tech mogul told CNBC last month, referring to the conversational chatbot that has become the face of the progress made by artificial intelligence. "Three million cars will drive themselves with no one. And then 5 million cars and then 10 million cars."
FSD is currently under investigation by regulators for its involvement in numerous accidents.
