Uh, no. The utter crap assistants used in these cars are incomparable to Tesla’s Autopilot even now. Polish and ease of use matter. Execution matters.

For a representative example, see how bad Mercedes’ latest and greatest E-Class w/ Drive Pilot is: http://www.autofil.no/936897/hands-off

It’s damning. And that is the one they advertised as being “self-driving”. That’s the best Mercedes has.

This review compares more of them: http://www.caranddriver.com/features/semi-autonomous-cars-co...

The best of non-Teslas have at least twice as many autonomous mode disengagements (i.e. they suck at the lane keeping job). They specifically call out Model S for being the only one that can keep in a lane without wobbling like a drunk driver. None of the “old” car manufactures can even get that right, let alone anything more.

So yes, on paper all these components exist for 3+ years and are nothing new. Exactly like smartphones existed before the iPhone did — remember those?

I'm sorry, but you are mistaken. I regularly drive a full fledged E-Class Mercedes Benz from 2015 (company car). It offers nothing even close to Tesla's autopilot.

Yeah, they're the same thing. You can totally leave those cars to drive around on their own the same way Tesla's do.

They're the same thing, and require the same level of attention to use safely. The only difference is that Tesla didn't enforce that level of attention because they're more willing to feed their drivers to the undersides of trucks at 70 mph and then blame the driver for not paying attention than Mercedes or Volvo are, and the press and HN are more willing to let them get away with it.

Do Teslas now drive around on their own? I seem to have missed something.

You haven't missed anything, they use the same system that's available in Mercedes and other cars. Some people just misread the announcement and we've been living with the misconception that Tesla has self-driving cars ever since.

I don't know why, either, since this would presumably be very easily debunked.