I’ve heard the same but I think the question is “is autopilot worth basing your entire car purchase around it?” and “will competitors be able to replicate Tesla’s success?”.

If autopilot is basically the only thing Tesla has going for it then they’ve got a risky path ahead of them.

> “is autopilot worth basing your entire car purchase around it?”

Unsupervised FSD is, yes.

> and “will competitors be able to replicate Tesla’s success?”.

I wouldn't bet on a big auto-maker, personally. But maybe they can outsource it. And...well, AI. Things are moving fast. But I think the moat can hold for a while.

From personal experience: "yes, no question", and "maybe though it'll take a long time and a lot of compute and training data". The day level 3 automation (basically what Tesla's FSD is, even though it's classified as level 2) comes to some other car, I'll strongly consider switching.

Maybe a stock crash and total failure of Tesla will be the best thing that happens. The US government (assuming us citizens can somehow continue to claw it back) or some benevolent entity can buy the ML models for cheap and open source them. It's really their only truly valuable, resilient asset, IMO.

For me, even now it's worth basing the entire purchase around it. Competitor auto-makers, if they executed perfectly, would need 4-5 years to get to catch up to where Tesla is now in autonomous driving; so probably a lot longer in reality.

I loved how the Cybertruck looked but when I test-drove it, I realized it wasn't for me. Tesla can now do a Rivian R1 or Hyundai Palissade type design and do well. But they will prioritize the cab since they got it to the current scale pretty quickly and it will be a money printer for them.

> *”will competitors be able to replicate Tesla’s success?”

Tech first companies like Waymo: yes, clearly.

OEM US automakers? Not a chance, not ever. They can’t do a simple infotainment system to save themselves. If they want to “auto” driving, they’re going to license it from some other company.

I, and many others, could never go back to a vehicle that doesn't have this level of self-driving. It really is such an improvement it's crazy how little people who haven't experienced it understand.

Sold my Model 3 last year, replaced with another EV without self-drive. Given that there was never a genuine "F" in the "FSD", I don't miss it a jot. Things the FSD couldn't do in the six years I owned the car:

1. Turn into my subdivision sensibly. Always missed the filter lane. Signalled at the point of making the extremely late decision to turn. Much angst behind.

2. Ignore the yellow flashing warning lights above highway 99. Always jammed on the brakes. The warning lights were not stops, ever, just "please avoid this bit of road furniture".

3. Obey the speed limit on the same highway. Either set itself to 110kph (I wish) or 40kph seemingly at random and sometimes different speeds for the same sections. For reference, most of the 99 that I use is 90kph, varied down if there's an incident or fog. Repeated notifications to Tesla had no effect. Note this is separate from the +/- margin that you could set; the base limit that it used was incorrect. It could even show me a speed limit sign in the screen, parse the speed correctly (to show the sign traffic) but blithely assure me the limit was 110.

These three things alone were taking the "F" out of the purchased product. I don't miss it, I didn't get good value out of it. Beta or no, it's a fundamentally flawed product which could never be implemented using the hardware in my car. It was the most direct lie Elon told to me personally.

I rented one for a road trip. It was nothing short of magical. Scary to give it control. And I can believe there are edge cases … but it’s real.

I have it. It is shockingly good but not as good as a person. And anything below 100% is dangerous.

For instance, how it detects pedestrians. Ive had instances where someone is looking to cross, the FSD either ignores them completely or it slows down a little, baits them into going forward, then resumes running them over. It detects car to car problems very well but doesn’t try to interpret pedestrian’s intent outside of the actual road.

It's actually easy. The media would love to print stories about robotaxis having chaotic accidents, so you can trust that you will hear about it if that starts happening.

You might be waiting a while, though... If it's not happening now, it's unlikely to ever happen.