Wow, surprised that so many people actually agree, at least to some degree.
A few related thoughts:
1. Making FSD a subscription as opposed to an option will allow Tesla to release FSD in limited areas, which will allow staged deployment. Think about it. If you buy it as an option, it has to work ANYWHERE in the country you drive. If you sell it as a subscription, Tesla can geofence certain areas, and people will be fine with it (as they will be able to cancel subscription once moved from specific geofenced and well tested area).
2. Tesla is looking for some "shortcuts" to make it work. Let me explain. Some years ago, Tesla blamed other auto-manufacturers for using shortcuts in a form of Lidar. Here is the exact quote (
Elon Musk: “Anyone relying on lidar is doomed.” Experts: Maybe not):
"Lidar is really a shortcut," added Tesla AI guru Andrej Karpathy. "It sidesteps the fundamental problems of visual recognition that is necessary for autonomy. It gives a false sense of progress, and is ultimately a crutch."
It definitely makes sense, if your goal is to advance specialized AI. However, if you want to deliver FSD as fast as possible, you want to take ALL shortcuts you can have, because of you don't know when AI will be that good so no shortcuts will be needed. You can deliver your product faster with shortcuts, and then remove shortcuts when you don't need them.
Now, Tesla is taking its own shortcut - using maps and related info. If you truly want "no shortcuts" solution, as Andrej argued, you should make Tesla drive without maps at all, at least they should NOT be mandatory for Tesla to drive. Which is clearly not the case. Earlier released smart summon heavily relates on maps of parking lots. And the recent FSD stop signs update will not even activate unless you updated maps, so it knows all the info it needs about intersections, etc. Basically, Tesla can't even detect intersection by itself. It has to know that the intersection is there, and only knowing that it can then try to identify stop signs/traffic signals status. Obviously, Tesla can't trust its software to even detect intersections, so it has to use the shortcut.
All in all, I think Tesla realized it needs some shortcuts, which I'm fine with (maps). It will give us the product faster (at least in US). But don't expect any breakthroughs or something even close to ability for Tesla to drive in areas like NYC. Again, that would be difficult to admit that shortcuts are Ok and accept Lidar (I don't see anything wrong in allowing my car to have better senses than I do), so that means using maps and possibly geofencing once FSD subscription is deployed. Subscription will remove lots of liability from Tesla, by not having the "FSD delivery promise" permanent. And we, current FSD owners, will quite likely get something from Tesla for our patience.