As I had said numerous times (I, II, III, IV), Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) lags massively on full self-driving technology. The leader when it comes to self-driving is Google (GOOG) (GOOGL, with General Motors (GM) also producing good work under very trying conditions.
However, the only company selling FSD (Full Self-Driving) cars is, and has been (since October 2016), Tesla. That is, Tesla has been selling cars with the promise they’ll be able to self-drive for nearly 1 year and 3 months (1.25 years).
Given this fact, both the market and the customers buying these cars might be interested in knowing when Tesla will deliver what it has been selling. This is all the more important, because:
- Tesla doesn’t just sell cars outright with the FSD option. It also sells / sold cars on two-year and three-year leases.
- Even those buying the cars outright will only keep them for a number of years. The average ownership time for a new car is 6.5 years, but it’s likely that EVs (and Teslas) are being held for a shorter time, given the more rapid evolution they experience.
As a reminder, it’s already been 1 year, 3 months since Tesla started selling cars with the FSD option. We also knew that Google and GM were well ahead of Tesla in actually developing FSD cars. So how long more might Tesla customers have to wait until Tesla delivers the feature it received money for?
Supposedly, by 2017 year-end Tesla would conduct a demo of a Los Angeles to New York City FSD drive. That would be just a demo. I have already shown why such demo, even if done, would be meaningless. Namely because:
- Such a trip would be as much as 99% highway. Highway self-driving is a massively simpler problem versus urban driving.
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