Fair enough: If my assumption is wrong, the conclusion might also be. But at some point an honest person admits their mistakes. The fact that Tesla is no longer offering a contractual promise that a car with "FSD" will someday actually be FSD, means they recognize that they were wrong. Yet, Tesla and Musk never apologized to early FSD buyers who were given that promise. It's never going to be possible to make my car full self-driving with a software update. Even though I didn't buy FSD, I was told that I could do so at any time, possibly at a higher price. Several hardware revisions later, it's clear that my car will never be capable of FSD, but there's been no apology or admission.
To be clear, it's the best car on the road and I plan on keeping it for another decade or so. But Tesla quietly and without fanfare changed the online description of FSD from "it can be a robotaxi" to "it can do NoAP in the city at Level 2 -- driver in full control at all times." And it cannot even do that very well! If Elon were honest he'd come right out and admit that and apologize. And perhaps offer a refund to the early FSD buyers.
They are definitely not economical yet. But $10,000 on top of a $50,000+ car for FSD which is still Level 2, is hardly economical either. The difference is that those other companies are not selling something that does not exist.
I would take a robotaxi operated by one of those other companies (except Uber) if they operated here. Even if I didn't need the ride, I'd pay for a ride just to experience it. If Tesla loaned me a car with "FSD" I think I'd be afraid to engage it. That's just me, but that's my assessment of the value of FSD at its present stage of development, and the companies that have functioning robotaxis. (OTOH, EAP is great, and for me it functions very well. There is one spot where I have to disengage it because the lines on the road confuse it.)
