Mobileye CEO Says Tesla's Self Driving Effort Likely To Hit 'Glass Ceiling'

Tesla Inc TSLA is working to develop level five self-driving cars.

If successful, it would mean the company is producing vehicles that can fully drive with no human intervention. Other companies are working on thisl, such as General Motors Company's GM Cruise, and Alphabet Inc's GOOG Waymo.

One of the less talked about companies working on full autonomy is the Israeli firm Mobileye, which was purchased by Intel Corporation INTC in 2017.

The company supplied the hardware used in Tesla's "Autopilot 1.0," Tesla's first advanced driver-assist system.

After splitting, Tesla developed a similar self-driving hardware suite. 

Both companies rely mostly on cameras, but Mobileye also uses HD Maps and lidar, two things Tesla CEO Elon Musk says are unnecessary to achieve full autonomy. 

In a conference covered by ArsTechnica, Mobileye CEO Amnon Shashua discussed the company's full self-driving progress while criticizing Tesla's approach without actually naming the company. 

Shashua said one approach is to "simply record everything from your cameras, and then when you are connected to Wi-Fi, send it to the cloud."

A company could "deploy a crappy system, call it beta" and then "improve and improve and improve," he said.

Shashua said this strategy is "one that's likely to "get into a glass ceiling." 

While Tesla's naming convention has been controversial, it is the most advanced driver-assist tech available to consumers.

Some Tesla owners are also using tesla's FSD Beta, which allows the car to fully drive itself from point A to point B, although it still requires driver monitoring and intervention at times. 

Photo courtesy of Tesla.