Nothing to stop Tesla testing their cars in private tests. They may already be doing this for all we know, but if so, its only a recent thing. Problem is, Tesla seems to want the public to test their stuff, rather than conduct official limited controlled testing and reporting which we and others were doing, so I don't think Tesla ever had (or possibly even have) any intent to get approval for testing something unless they could do it their way en masse in public by public.
I would like to be wrong, as I still am still personally of the belief that had Tesla wanted to get to Level 3 (or even Level 4 capable) highways with their current platform, they could have done so with a fraction of the effort that they put into city streets. But they have shown no intent (at least in public) in which to do so and tbh, I personally have lost the will to continue to give any benefit of the doubt, especially with hindsight such as knowing the story behind their now infamous FSD sales video (The one with 'The person in the drivers seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything, the car is driving itself' at the start but forget to mention the 'this video is a compilation of drives as the car could not complete the circuit, sometimes without crashing'). But maybe when single stack goes out, this will fall out in the wash. But still a far cry from promises they were making 3 years ago. At least they have admitted that it was harder than they thought, but that's no consolation for those that for no fault of their own other than believing Tesla and EM, have paid largely for either vaporware or functionality that simply does not work to any level of reasonable expectation.
