There is no doubt that the first SitB L5 consumer car will be a huge game changer. And it will happen some day. But it is unlikely that one company alone will do it en masse before everybody else. It is more likely that we will see the spread of L4 robotaxis. We will see the spread of advanced driver assist on consumer cars. We will see L3 on consumer cars. And several AV companies will probably achieve SitB L5 consumer cars at roughly the same time. So consumers will have a choice. That is why the article suggests that there won't be just 1 FSD winner, there will be multiple FSD winners that share the pot.
When things spread fast its often hard to really say who was the first.
Waymo will likely go down as the first to autonomous driving because people will remember their first time in a driverless vehicle where they had no real economical or emotional investment in it. It simply did what it did, and its remembered as tool that did a job.
The first L4 capable consumer vehicle will likely be remembered as it will be the first time where it allowed a person to get into the passenger seat, and sleep during a journey down the interstate.
The distinction between L4, and L5 likely won't be remembered as we expect operational parameters to be limited in the beginning of autonomous vehicles, and its going to be such a blur. Once something is introduced upon the world the pace of innovation happens at breathtaking pace. Eventually humans won't bother driving, and when there is a once every 3 year storm they'll think "Do I bother remembering how to drive again or do I just let the drone deliver the groceries today?".
I don't believe Tesla will be the one that enables autonomous driving through technological breakthroughs, but they will be the key in setting precedence that allows for the industry to flood in. Basically Tesla will break upon the gates with millions of FSD owners yelling "let me in". It might be a slow process to break it open, but it will break.
L3 will likely be remembered as "yeah, I'm not sure what we were thinking with that one".
In our lifetimes we likely won't see every place/situation managed by autonomous driving. They'll be people that will have vehicles capable of "off-grid" manually driving, and they'll scuff at the auto drive for being too careful.
On-grid human driving will be so restricted speed wise that no one will bother. With the pandemic we were supposed to have safer roads, but just the opposite happened because humans can't resist selfish urges at the cost of everyone else's safety . In Europe they've already put in place regulations to greatly restrict vehicle speed. Once speeding has been removed it removes another hurdle to self-driving cars.
No speeding + addiction to our screens + paying ober/lyft/taxi drivers a fair wage + everyone is on some kind of drug = fertile ground for autonomous driving to spread.
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