It's dead. That's how they talk when they kill a product but don't want to say that.
Which doesn't surprise me in the slightest. I suspect a self driving car, on city streets, without general AI, is impossible.
It'll only work on prepared, limited access roads (like highways).
Next step: Instrument highways for self driving cars.
In-City self-driving cars is dead.
We must let go delusional thinking that with current AI we can safely throw autonomous car in a dense urban area.
Using autonomous car to improve mobility in rural area (eg. for elders people) would prove much more applicable as a paid service and complemental to public transportation.
But if mainstream geeks and investors keep dreaming about K2000 they will be deceived by current AI.
Given the capability which Tesla currently demonstrates, it seems extreme to call the idea of full autonomy with current AI technologies delusional. With their current progress, full autonomy in production seems reasonable within a few years.
As for capability and reasonable aspect, I will be much more interested in reading post-mortem reports of the fatal crash under a truck by road safety organizations when (and if) they come out...
Distinguishing verifiable facts from marketing is actually important...
It's not an end to end trip.
The cars are also unable to handle unexpected changes in traffic lights, or road signage.
They are very very far from being able to drive entirely independently.
Or take the traffic-sign recognition systems. Seems easy, right? Not so fast. All the systems I tried made a lot of severe mistakes. For example sometimes they were thinking speed limit signs painted on the back of trucks or buses were real ones. Or they struggled when they saw too many signs or signs partially covered by something else.
Recently I watched a test of a semi-autonomous Mercedes S500 in a typical big-city traffic. During a 10 minute test-drive it managed to "unconciously" change the lane and drive 2 lanes for some time. And also it would have passed a crossing on a red light, if the operator didn't intervene. Nice try, but the car industry is still very far from making fully autonomous driving a reality.