Re: uneasy about any level of automation
Yes they are, and they are amongst the safest vehicles out there, mostly because of their low center of gravity, but also because of the assistive devices that are standard (and not really any different than those on, say, a high-end BMW, but better than that of a mid-range Ford which leads to the shocker than expensive cars have better safety systems!!).
One of the peculiarities of Tesla is that by choosing to call their assistive systems "autopilot", a bunch of idiots who don't know what an autopilot is think it's an autonomous driving system... which it isn't, any more than the autopilot on a commercial airliner is autonomous. "Autopilots" basically keep a aircraft heading in the right direction at the right altitude (sound familiar?), although of course there are those that can follow a more complex route ("Turn left at Greenland", for example) and, yes, there are other autonomous systems (like Autoland) that can do more.
But exactly like Tesla's autopilot, only a fool would trust an autopilot/autoland system not to put you on a runway just as another aircraft decided to cross (because the ATC voice traffic isn't available to it, it won't "hear" a go-around command).
Unfortunately, there are a lot of fools around, and as there are more cars than airplanes, there are more fools on the roads than in the skies.
Autopilot/cruise control/lane following/predictive braking are all great tools. But the whole point of the report is that it's a very, very long way from that ("Level 2", apparently) to "Level 5".
Now, if Tesla _did_ have something with higher capabilities (say, "Level 3"), why would they put it in a passenger car? What's the value proposition there? Yes, it's nice, but...
On the other hand, putting it in a _semi truck_ makes a lot of sense. Consider a convoy of tractor-trailers following each other nose-to-tail, with the driver in the lead vehicle driving the whole convoy, completely networked amongst each other. Yeah, there are lots of details to consider, but on the long stretches between towns, this seems like a reasonable (if not perfect) idea. Kinda like a train.,..
(It's also worth noting that Tesla has true self-driving cars in the Boring Tunnel system. Of course, this is a controlled environment with only other Teslas to worry about, and they can all be networked, but it's possible that Musk's comment had more to do with this -- public transportation using autonomous vehicles in a closed system -- than anything else).
Biting the hand that feeds IT
