Hi Mark, actually the government doesn't seem to be comfortable with how Tesla is working with them. They are really bad at working with govt. In Japanese culture, first to know should be govt. Then public. It is very bad for Elon to say "Japan is the last" in public.
It will take a while. If Tesla wants to go their own way, just release it and keep pushing. If they want to obey, then first thing they needed to do is to share the info with the govt.
What gets me is the fact that Nissan has been showing hands-free driving commercials on TV for the past 6 months. These delays in approval for non-Japanese products/technologies smack of protectionism. The same thing happened with Amazon's Segway a few years ago.
Just curious, has anyone with Autopilot hardware received 7.x yet?