Elon said that Tesla would have a version of the software that could do full self driving by the end of this year. Then he very clearly spelled out that it would not be available to consumers until regulators approve it at some later date (possibly years).
Why? We (the general public) don’t know exactly but rumors are that some issues were uncovered and Tesla decided to slow down the rollout of this feature until the issues are fixed.
That’s good that they slowed down the rollout. I’d rather wait for a safer, better version of the feature than get a dangerous version, if that’s part of the issue.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with this picture except for people interpreting forward-looking statements as 100% locked-in promises. They are not promises.
In technology, people predict stuff all the time and sometimes the predictions come true on time; other times they take longer. Perfectly normal stuff but outsiders don’t always get this. Elon has correctly predicted plenty of stuff that has come to pass. Not always on time, but it is a given that schedules can slip in technology.
So if they can make it capable of detecting stationary objects they're basically already there.
Still amazingly far from "full" self driving.
He was saying only that the internal development versions of the software would be able to do that by then.