Seems unknowable still since Waymo and Cruise are now both deploying fully autonomous vehicles ahead of most peoples' expectations. If graphed, I'd imagine this implies a non-linear curve given these expectations were grounded in linearity imo. So it's under-determined basically.

They're deploying AVs way (1-2 years, at least) behind their own schedules, by their own admission. Ask anyone inside of the industry (including Musk) and they'll tell you that the problem is the long march of nines I mentioned earlier.

This is also why you saw a bunch of AV startups with < 50 employees that got big initial funding rounds but folded after a couple of years - it's pretty easy to grab a few dozen grad students, slap some LIDAR on a car, encode basic road rules, and get a demo working that's compelling to investors. Once you get past that initial pitch though, you get into the weeds of trying to progress without causing regressions elsewhere.

Also, what makes you think those expectations were grounded in linearity? Waymo went from an initial project at Google in early 2009 to driving 10 complex 100 mile routes without intervention in mid 2010 - on the surface, it would have seemed they were 95% of the way there. Improvement has been sublinear for a very long time and everyone in the AV industry is aware of it.

The linear assumption I'm referring to is forwards-looking not backwards-looking. Up until say last year I think the consensus was that a production-deployed FSD vehicle was ~5 years away. It shipped this year for both Waymo and Cruise. Unless you're arguing that the pessimists and optimists have just been arguing over the slope of the line, not the curvature (which may be fair.) If that surprise is any indication it leads me to think a similar consensus-breaking event may happen with Tesla, but time will tell when that is, since as you state they are behind in several ways.

Cruise and Waymo Gamble Lives with Unsupervised Self-Driving Cars

https://jperla.medium.com/tesla-saves-lives-waymo-gambles-pa...