It is not subjective, since Level is a manufacturer definition. Either the manufacturer defines the Level or they do not. Prototypes are specifically included in the Level. Waymo designates their cars as Level 4, so their prototypes are Level 4.
I don't understand how you can say that a car is whatever level a manufacturer defines it to be. The levels are defined by the SAE, not by the car maker. A car must do what the SAE says to be able to call itself a particular level.
The end-game (assuming we DO one day get to level 4/5, with a nod to the unknowns here), is that most cars will be self-driving, and at some point many people won't even bother getting a driving license (who knows how to ride a horse these days?). And yes, THEN the insurance companies will try to cling onto a dead business model with every legal/political trick they can think of.
I highly doubt it. There will always be need for insurance. Collisions are only one aspect of insurance. There's theft, vandalism, hailstorms, and there will continue to be collisions for a very long time. There will be court battles over who is liable, and therefore who must pay the insurance premiums, but insurance will be needed and insurance companies will do just fine. Note that you have home insurance even though you never drive your home into the side of another home.
The folks who will suffer when cars drive themselves are the owners and employees of body shops. And undertakers will have to wait a bit longer for your business because a lot of people will live a little longer because they're not killed prematurely in auto accidents.
Wow. Thanks for posting that, but it is more than I can chew. As near as I can tell, levels 3, 4, and 5 can have a limited ODD (be geofenced) so we need a term to describe what Tesla is trying to build: A system that can drive anywhere a car is capable of going.
Also, the definitions include that level 3 (which I've been describing as eyes off the road) must alert the driver "in a timely manner" when it is necessary for the driver to intervene. I was not able to read the whole document so I don't know if "timely" is defined. But I cannot tell if this means the driver can watch a movie, and the system will alert her/him in time to take over, or if "timely" allows the system to alert the driver to a hazard so close that the driver has to have his/her hands on the wheel at all times in order to respond in time.
The car I'd like, realistically, is one that does what my EAP does now, but would allow me to take my eyes off the road, and rather than me being responsible for knowing when I need to disengage the system, the car will alert me, say ten seconds before I need to take over. I've been calling this Level 3. Is level 3 something different now, and if so, how do I refer to a car that could do this? A 35-page document is more than I can digest to try to answer this.
How about a car that can drive anywhere on-road while the driver sleeps in the back. No geofencing, but it may occasionally be necessary for the car to park and wake up the driver to take over. I was calling this Level 4, but apparently Level 4 is now much more broadly defined. What do I call a car that could do this?
I was on the Edens going southbound where the Wilson Street ramp merges. There are no dashes at this merge. A pickup truck raced down the ramp with the idea to pass me on the right and continue along - illegally - along the shoulder. At about the same time the truck was passing me, my car decided it was time to automatically center in the big fat merge lane contrary to any normal human behavior. I held the wheel to maintain the current trajectory so as not to run into the truck nor to freak out the truck driver and cause him to do something weird, and that caused AS to disengage. It SO BADLY want to veer to the right and hit that truck and get in the center of that big, wide, fat, juicy lane!
What level is that? Stupid level? I love my car, but the thing doesn't actually know how to drive. It can go straight in a line and maybe pull a couple of tricks out here and there, but let's reel it back a bit. This thing is nowhere close to actually understanding how to drive.
AP/EAP is not intended to "know how to drive." AP/EAP is a driver assist feature that keeps your car centered in the lane and adjusts its speed to the flow of traffic, within the maximum you set, and subject to speed limits on most roads. That's all it is and all it does, and is why it's only Level 2 and requires your constant attention. I have to disengage EAP from time to time for things (very roughly) like you describe. Pedestrians or bicycles very close to or in the lane, poorly-marked lanes, too-wide lanes at merge points, etc.
Public service announcement: Tesla cars today perform a certain small number of driver-assist tasks, some of them pretty well and others just so-so. They are not "self-driving" by any common-sense definition.