You do buy in Tesla's marketing as gospel though.

> A Tesla has all the hardware needed for Level 5 autonomy (which they've demo'd, but requires regulatory approval), and it's a software update away.

Audi, BMW, Google etc. demoe'd similar capacity as the tesla did 2-3 years ago. Do you even understand how difficult problem it is? It's not a problem you engineer away. Do you think Tesla made machine learning breakthroughs that Google or CMU (Uber) researchers couldn't? Tesla beating Google at Machine learning?

> And their whole fleet is sensors-on all the time, whether you're using it or not to enable that, which is not true for any other vehicle manufacturer.

Does it matter what kind of sensor? Almost everybody else agrees LIDAR is necessary. And what use is random data from useless sensors? It's like saying that you'd put cameras in a pedestrian crossing, and soon you'll process it to make a human level intelligence.

They demo'd it, but they didn't ship it!

Ahh, a controlled demo on a test track with impeccably clear road lines and signs. Something they could have tested a hundred times with, potentially overfitting a route. Even then the Tesla was over-cautius, stopping metres before in front of a stop sign.

And that is still level3 or level4. Level5 is inarguably far far away.

1. You are comparing all of tesla models to individual models from other brands

2. You want to speculate on the future market, go ahead, I dont think Tesla has any special position on lithium batteries.

3. Solar is not a hockey stick, not sure what trend lines you are talking about.

4. Talk to anyone working on self driving cars and they will tell you level 5 is at least 10 years away. Can a tesla drive on icey road in northern canada in blizzard conditions with a couple failed sensors? Nope, then it is not level 5.