If true, that would seem to mean that Tesla's self-driving car program is dead on arrival. Clearly emergency collision avoidance is not optional for a self driving car with mass adoption. That's a pretty serious claim to make.
Detection of other vehicles, as shown on the dashboard display, is far below the level Google has demonstrated. Often, there's a nearby car that's not showing on the display. This probably reflects that Tesla only has vision and radar forward; side sensing is just short-range sonar, like a backup warning system.
What self-driving software Tesla is going to ship in the future is not publicly known, but we do know the sensor suite they're currently using, and it's far below Google or Volvo level for situational awareness.
[1] https://electrek.co/2017/03/18/tesla-autopilot-2-autosteer-t...