If you’ve been following autonomous vehicle development, you’ve probably come across this chart that tries to compare the systems space into leaders, contenders, challengers, and followers. Tesla was placed in the “followers” category.If you’re an FSD Beta user, the chart made by these “experts” might be making blood shoot out of your eyes, especially as impressed as owners seem to be with the latest release.
There’s a similar issue trying to compare systems from Cruise, Waymo, and Baidu. These systems really suck in that they can’t be used anywhere and there’s no national coverage along major highways, either. If you could buy a Waymo van, it wouldn’t be able to take you on a road trip, so that means it sucks compared to Tesla, Ford, GM, and almost everyone else. But the Waymo van can operate without a driver at all in the small geographic areas that it was designed to operate in.
So at any time, a company that is in the lead even in a restricted set of criteria could suddenly go away. It’s like running a race with a sniper taking aim at the track. Sure, someone may appear to be winning, but they could very easily fall over dead at any moment, so you don’t know that for sure.