It's putting their money where their mouth is.
Musk is putting his mouth on a lot of things, I guess that makes him a baby?
This is a marketing stunt. They've taken a well-solved problem (stop and go) and taken responsibility for it, and getting headlines by screaming something about J3016 level 3.
40mph is more than enough to kill someone.
How exactly do you think Waymo works that they wouldn't take responsibility?
Now, I'd argue that Waymo has probably somewhat solved highways already as they're much simpler than city driving, they're just not offering it to the public yet.
If you want to convince me that their system is way more capable than Tesla, you would have to show me evidence that Tesla FSD fails in the same limited environment as Mercedes is certified L3 in, and I have not seen any.
If a magician bets you $1,000,000 that the card he is holding is the one you chose, are you not going to change your position on how likely it is that he's right?
"It's less capable except for the minor fact that if we <<kill>> someone, it's <<our fault, not yours>>".
You know, that minor factor called "life or death".
> ... only when driving under 40 mph on highways. So it is pretty useless.
If Waymo/Tesla/whatever would do this, they'd be the darlings of the internet.
If Mercedes does this, no one thinks: "ah, it's the first iteration, they can you know, <<increase>> the speed later on".