Funny - I passed what seemed like two Apple self driving cars the other day on the highway in TN that were in a caravan. One looked like it had no driver at all in the front two seats.
And Tesla and others have provided amazing videos of self-driving cars doing the completely autonomous thing while navigating suburban streets, stopping at stop signs and lights, stopping for pedestrians.
Of course it's in perfect weather.
And during the day.
And the area where it is operating has been mapped out beforehand.
And there is a $5,000 LIDAR sensor being used to scan things out to several hundred meters.
FSD is going to be very gradual and it is highly unlikely that even next year's 3rd generation AP system will be able to operate the car completely autonomously in the majority of situations.
A use case that I'm almost positive Tesla is working for as a 1st step of FSD is navigate on autopilot where the driver is freed from having to interact with the vehicle at all from exit to exit. Tesla will introduce something like this and bill it as FSD, which it is, but only for limited use case.
You would activate it as the car is approaching the highway and the car would then drive itself to your exit ramp and you'd be free to do other things.
It will still fail and require the driver to take over in MANY situations that can and do happen to drivers on a weekly or monthly basis such as inclement weather, traffic detours, multiple blocked lanes, construction situations, etc.
Just my prediction.
The fabled FSD car that takes you to the shopping mall completely on its own, parks itself, comes and gets you when you are ready to leave, and then drives you home while you play Pokemon and recover from your two martini lunch, I'm guessing that is 5 years away at a minimum. Probably more like 7-10 years.
