What makes you think Tesla has the best system? The managers in charge of autopilot keep quitting. The media says they are quitting because Elon is making deceptive claims about autopilot. Do you have evidence to the contrary?
There are two autopilot systems commercially available today - Tesla Autopilot and Honda Sensing Driver Assistance. Two more are slated to be released - Cadillac SuperCruise and Audi Traffic Jam Pilot. The rest is an all-you-can-read buffet of press releases about some great tech this one company tested in this one lab (I hear Waymo is great, and Volvo’s is even better).
Pending Cadillac’s and Audi’s road tests in 2018, Tesla Autopilot v1 is the best driver assistance suite available commercially in 2017, even with all of the executive departures.
It's an interesting time for Tesla, they feel like the automotive equivalent of AMD - David keeping Goliath honest. How many automotive companies saw Tesla become an actual disruptive threat and then spent tens of billions on self driving and electrification? Tesla isn't going to compete with Honda or Toyota by copying their model (or even their manufacturing process).
Take a minute and look at the bolt and the leaf - they're god-ugly, emotionless, unsexy modes of transportation. Buying a leaf is the result of sitting down with a spreadsheet. Need some anecdotal proof? Think to yourself how many of your coworkers, friends and family you can see driving one. How about a model 3? I see more model S's during my commute than I do leafs, volts and bolts combined.
Another place to look for confirmation is the lithium ion battery line which was built in collaboration with Panasonic. Panasonic is 2/3rd the size of Toyota and are well versed in manufacturing process.
If Tesla wanted to borrow a page from the incumbents they'd be doing so, they have enough brains from those companies already on staff. It's a safe bet that there are very few idiots in upper management at Tesla. Elon isn't the type to ignore a process problem, he's a modeling/simulation junkie and probably figured out something that the others are missing. That's not to say things are perfect, but I don't think they're as dire as the article makes them out to be.
The shareholders have faith, and although Tesla shares are slightly bubbly, they're still doing unbelievably well on most fronts.
0. You have fallen for the "post hoc ergo propter hoc" fallacy. Tesla was not the first company that worked on these things. They were just the first who decided to sell a semi practical implementation and hype it up as if it where completely finished and polished.
Can you elaborate?