I'm guessing it's more of the idea that Japan will tolerate 100 possibly dangerous vehicles to further their engineering goals.

That's still incredibly sketchy.

What any sane engineer would do is to keep testing these cars with a safety driver and gather anough information/miles to claim higher statistical safety than a human driver, while keeping track that those miles were really in fact driven without intervention/(or with predictable and managed intervention). Once they would have those numbers, then they would know for sure that the car is safe and they could release/manufacture hundreds of thousands/unlimited number of units to the market. If they didn't - it means either the car really isn't tested or it doesn't do what they claim it does.

Releasing a 100 vechicles just doesn't make sense, unless the claims are somehow shady or misrepresentative.

It’s possible they are selling these at a loss to seed or whet the market. If it takes off then maybe it will reappear at a profitable price.

Is very careful initial launch for such product weird? I don't think so.

> If it does what they say it does, they should be able to make a killing as the first mover

Of course, if it _doesn't_ do what they say it does, they will, ah, also make a killing. Or many killings. You can understand the caution.

I'm not sure "make a killing as the first mover" is the best choice of wording when the topic is self-driving cars.

No different to the Toyota Century, or the Nissan President, or (to a lesser degree) Alphard etc. The major Japanese car makers have quite a few vehicles (or options) that don't get exported, but whose features show up later in a Lexus or similar.

Toyota Century/Crown/Alphard/etc is specially designed car for Japan but Honda Legend isn't. It's not well sold, I believe its primary market is US or China (sold as Acura RLX).

Worth noting the Acura RLX has been discontinued with no successor planned. The Legend will continue to be sold in select markets, but as of right now, plans have only been announced for Japan.

It's just a marketing piece. Tesla's FSD is way more advanced than just a 'traffic jam pilot', but they don't market it as level 3. It's a low-hanging fruit for marketing.

I guess you are technically right, since Elon promised level 5 last year.

"Full self driving, coast to coast, this year, no hands on the steering wheel!"

He also promised it by the end of 2018.

Oh, and before that, 2016.

Who cares. Few years here and there don't matter. Here's a video of the current FSB beta driving from San Fransisco to Los Angeles without driver intervention: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQG2IynmRf8

I hear this repeatedly from people. "Who cares, it's marketing, he's cheerleading", as if Elon's quotes don't have a material impact on Tesla's stock price. They'll then cry and complain about "the shorts, the shorts", and how unfair it is that they're having an impact on stock prices.

Coast to coast means places like Iowa, Pittsburgh in winter, downpours, poor roads.

Not LA to SF on a perfect, cloudy (no sunglare) day on well-maintained interstate. Or a 14 minute video from a Tesla fan site that says "Here's a brief video of a 8 hour drive where, we swear, there was no intervention".

I don't care about the stock price. I just observe what the car does compared to "first car with Level 3 autonomous driving".