Even if they arrive 1-2 years later than Waymo/Cruise, they can quickly dominate the driverless market.
This sounds like premature optimization. The real unsolved problem here is autonomous technology (software and hardware), not manufacturing equipped vehicles. No point having millions of vehicles if your self driving technology doesn't actually work.
> They do not rely on HD maps.
Precisely why FSD doesn't work and is still level 2. The AV players have shown fully autonomous driving needs HD maps and (inconspicuously) the only one not to graduate out of level 2 self driving is the one that's not using HD maps — Tesla. Creating/maintaining HD maps isn't nearly as hard as you think it is, but the benefits are incredible for safe driving.
It's tough to anchor Tesla's arrival based on the rest of the industry's progress. Cruise and Waymo are heavily dependent on Lidar; Tesla is solving a fairly different technological problem.