To be fair, as a human I don't feel particularly adept at driving in bad weather, so an autonomous vehicle that simply slows down to where it "feels confident" and uses some kind of radar to avoid collisions won't be doing too badly.

Some humans have an inability to handle driving in good weather, heavy traffic, at high speeds, to avoid drinking, to avoid driving when tired, let alone bad weather.

There's a mostly straight street on my very ordinary and safe commute home. When it's raining at night and the road is wet and reflecting street lights, it's actually very difficult to see the lane markings and make sure you're sticking to your lane. And in those conditions, it's not always safe to be constantly checking your blind spot for a car beside you. This is in an urban environment, no snow, no crests or crazy curves, no risk of fallen trees, and I find that a stressful drive despite having driven that road thousands of times.

My biggest gripe about hearing about the invention of planes is the lack of runways.

My biggest gripe about hearing about the invention of the automobile is the lack of mechanics and gas stations.

My biggest gripe about hearing about the invention of the internet is the lack of home computer ownership.

etc. etc.

"the lack of runways"

As an historic note with little relevance to your point, this wasn't solved until the US entered the second world war and the government built a bunch of them for heavy bombers, which were later converted into civilian use.

That's why the flying boats, like the Boeing 314 Clipper, were the go-to plane for long distance travel pre-war. There's no need for a runway when you can land and take off on water.

"lack of mechanics"

This isn't really true. The early cars could be fixed by most any mechanic or blacksmith. Remember, farm equipment was already pretty mechanically complicated.

The lack of gas stations was much more critical.

The specific examples I used were not the point.

The point is that you must give new technology time to grow and become mainstream before you can expect them to be everything for everyone.

Lots of new tech will never be everything for everyone

Hence "As an historic note with little relevance to your point".

At best, treat it as comment about how hard it is to think what detractors to X might have said before X became wide-spread. I believe your example of 'lack of mechanics' is poorly chosen; akin to saying 'My biggest gripe with hearing about fully autonomous cars is that they will be so expensive that only the five richest kings of Europe would own them.'

As a real-world examples I think are better, 'My biggest gripe with hearing about telephony is there won't be enough operators to handle the number of calls.' 'My biggest gripe with hearing about computers is that they are too bulky.' 'My biggest gripe with television is I'm at work when my favorite show is on.'

Agreed. It would be very impressive to see an autonomous car that could handle blowing snow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHWNQVVY-LI

Have any manufacturers even fixed cruise control for icy roads? That should be trivial, but no car I've ever driven has handled it.

In theory, as storage costs approach 0, computers get faster and and vision becomes more sophisticated, road conditions shouldn't matter too much.

These cars are going to be scanning constantly in nice weather, it shouldn't be a stretch to then figure out relative position with GPS and then use the distance to 'known' trees / signs / landmarks from previous trips to determine lane position.

I'm sure there are barren areas where this would be tough (I've driven I-80 through snowy Nebraska about a dozen times en route to ski vacations in Colorado) but "stay between the snow banks" should be a decent start for autonomous driving.

I mean, even pilots have to take control sometimes. In great conditions autonomous cars will arrive quicker than many believe. However, most people (myself included) would NOT trust an autonomous car, essentially operating in beta, to navigate a new england winter. That functionality is going to come and can even be pushed OTA later.

I now wonder if you will just pay $199 for the "blizzard package" or something. I suspect Tesla wouldn't do something like this, but just like Mosaic, they get to shape a lot of the early thought behind this.

If a car company charged more to simply turn on a feature that ought to exist, like driving in a blizzard, then I would never buy a car from them. ever. I only have one life to lose and it's not going at the hands of some scummy company that intentionally holds back software it can install in an instant so it can nickle and dime me.

Upgrades generally not just(or possibly even) safety software, will have an assigned value of the developer hours assigned to creating and maintaining upgrades and will be built into the cost of cars. Unlike 4 wheel drive, which legitimately needs to be more expensive having much more hardware, software releases can leverage pre existing APIs and hardware interfaces.

If we assume that either all cars have the software priced in, a "good actor" would allow you to pay less for "blizzard navigation software" if you lived in S. California.

At this point, Tesla is so new that they will make it as attractive as possible and push all of their updates for free. I also have a high degree of trust, at least relative to other auto companies, in Tesla. One would imagine GM, or another less scrupulous company would try to do something like this if they were the front runners.

edit: Point taken though. I am also not keen on some of the other car and boat manufacturers producing identical engines, and then having you "pay" to unlock more horepower.

Here's the Hyundai SDC test last year on a rainy day. It's fascinating to see where it succeeds and where it fails.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xs9Gr9V2mOE

Plus, batteries don't perform as well in freezing temperatures.