I understand you want to refute/diminish the parent comment on finite automata, but I think you are providing a straw man argument. The parent comment does provide an interesting, factual statement. I don't believe finite state automata are at all close in complexity to real-world self-driving car systems (or even a portion thereof). Your closing statement is also dismissive and unconstructive.

I believe finite state modeling is used at NASA, A google search brings up a few references (that I'm probably not qualified to speak to), and I also remember hearing/reading a lecture on how they use them to make completely verifiable programs but can't find the exact one at the moment.