There's a huge difference between "works fine 95% of the time in a place with very cooperative weather" and "works 99.99% of the time no matter the weather"

I mean there are times when human drivers are insufficient for the conditions.

Honestly I dont think there is that much difference. California is massive. Having self driving cars here will completely change society.

I disagree with all three assertions above - the dififculty increases exponentially for the last few percentage points, just like energy required increases towards infinity as you approach the speed of light,

California is a small part of one country.

All we will get out of self-driving cars is more traffic jams, more consumerism, and less security in our lives because you might be locked out of essential service in case you didn't sign a lisence agreement or made an offensive tweet, or replied to a spammer

California weather is very forgiving even if you account for places like Tahoe. AFAIK, none of the self driving companies have much experience with scenarios like New York in winter.

To be commercially available for passenger use in major cities at level 5, regulators have to also agree it's level 5. It's not just a technical problem.

> Are Waymo and Cruise not commercial products?

Not really, and they aren't level 5. Essentially the bet is that getting to 5 is harder than people think, and getting to commercially available SAE5 is going to take (at least) longer than 7 years. Bear in mind all commercial systems now are level 2 and testing features for 3. Waymo/Cruise are testing 4.