Those 370k Teslas aren’t autonomous, and won’t be any time soon. But that’s not what Elon is selling. My point is that the last 10% isn’t only more difficult, it’s nothing like the first 90%. You could spend incredible effort training the car not to drive under semi trailers, only to treat a trash bag on the wind like a falling boulder. The cars don’t understand the road at all.
And I am in 100% agreement. But if Elon can make you think that the last 10% doesn't matter, he doesn't have to do it. I personally don't think it will work until the cars are all operating on the same networked system. If there's nothing but GoogleCars on the road, Google won't run into itself. Start mixing Google and Uber and Ford? Yeah, if they're all using the same benchmarked software and they're all networked, maybe. Add humans? Or ripoff Chinese autonomy conversions? It'll never get there.
In an ideal world, I think we'd develop a system that anyone could tie into. I don't really want a Tesla network dominating the road because it feels so anti-competitive, BUT all the technical hurdles of having an openly licensed API that is safe and effective leave proprietary road networks as the only real possibility in my mind. Not because an open system like that can't exist, but because it seems there's no feasible way to implement and maintain it in the status quo with all of these companies working against each other for the same goal.