I think this business model has a far greater chance of succeeding than something like Tesla's. It's easier to just focus on a small averagely populated area than high density urban cities or in Tesla's case, the entire country. It's safer to deal with construction/road issues, unique quirks present of each city when you're only focusing on one community at a time.

It's far less of a headache dealing with one set of regulations for a community that has few, impressionable decisionmakers than trying to scale while trying to meet ever-changing individual regulations from each state/city and an uncertain national landscape. Only Google and the big automakers have the available influence to push for federal regulation standards and even those can be scrapped if some major incident happens or morons refuse to follow proper safety protocols to chase profits (uber).

If Tesla pushes level 4 or 5 autonomy, they need to consider every circumstance (rain, snow, dust storms, tornadoes, ice, and so many other random unique Mother Nature quirks), every road construction issue, hazards, fallen trees etc. all at once. It just isn't feasible. You need city employees to report fallen trees, garbage truck routes, area with frequent deer or animal crossings etc. They can't just say it's autonomous in one particular area where maybe only 100 Teslas are present, it's just not economical.

I think this route of small community adaptation is the most likely and it's great to see most players shift to this model. This means that automakers aren't going to be the big players in this space for another decade or so. It's not economical for big beuracratic, slow moving businesses like Ford to enter into this landscape. Small companies and startups pushing into this has its advantages and disadvantages however.