Well it makes perfect sense to me!
Perhaps the term "extract" is problematic. I am not suggesting that using the "regulators shut us down" excuse removes any legal obligations at all - only that it may allow Tesla to save face from a public perspective and mitigate any hit to the stock price if and when it becomes apparent that L5 FSD and robotaxi won't happen.
At autonomy day (Apr 2019) the stock price was about $50 a share. Elon expected RTs approved for use by end of 2020.
It's now early 2022, and the stock price is over $800 a share.
Doesn't seem like missing RT deadlines is hurting em much.
As far as comparison with previous years of predictions, IMO we are much closer now to a point where, instead of local maxima, Tesla is realizing that many of the current FSD limitations may be the result of limits of the existing technology and it's no longer simply a matter of "harder than everyone expected" anymore.
Tesla was still citing the local maximum issue as recently as a couple months ago, with the new rewrite (not even yet released) being the next "solution" for it- so I don't think they've given up on that approach at all.
I think there is a distinct possibility that Tesla may "throw in the towel" over the coming months - at least in regard to the current hardware and sensor platform - and the "regulators shut us down" excuse is the perfect way for Tesla to accomplish this. And again, the recent recalls and investigations makes it a good time right now to consider this option.
Yeah, don't see it, especially since it'd be objectively untrue (the regulator bit)
We already know there's HW4 and next-gen cameras incoming-- remains to be see how easily they can retrofit those on existing cars... (so far they've had no issue, other than being bad at logistics scheduling, upgrading HW2.0 cars for both cameras and computers).
That doesn't mean that HW "solves" FSD either... but given nobody else seems remotely close in a consumer-buyable car it gives Tesla a lot more runway to keep iterating.
(and I also don't think they can get past L2, on city streets anyway, with the current HW-- they might could do L3 highway right now though- or L4 highway with relatively narrow ODDs related to weather and such)
Another possibility is that they lock FSD in at some level of limited functionality, pop the champagne, and call it done. But if it still doesn't technically qualify as L3 (much less L5/robotaxi) then that approach doesn't have the same face-saving advantages as saying the "regulators" killed it.
For everyone who bought after March 2019 L2 is all they're owed.
Deliver city streets driving at L2, those folks are whole- legally. (though they'll doubtless whine quite a bit about elons tweets)
Everyone who bought before is still owed something- either L4 or a refund with interest.
just like the 2020 Holiday update was 
