Waymo co-CEO Dmitri Dolgov has drawn a sharp distinction between his company’s sensor strategy and Tesla’s (NASDAQ: TSLA) camera-only approach to autonomous driving. “There has been a long-standing debate about what kind of sensors you actually need for autonomous driving,” Dolgov said, adding, “Naturally, more sensors means higher performance, but it also means higher complexity.” Waymo vehicles rely on three distinct sensing modalities, combining radar, lidar, and cameras, while Tesla’s robotaxi platform depends on cameras alone. Dolgov was careful to clarify that Waymo’s sensors are not simply redundant backups for one another, with each operating through its own separate processing system before data is merged. The mileage gap between the two companies remains stark, with Waymo having logged 220 million rider-only miles compared to Tesla’s reported 380,000 driverless miles.