This seems maybe technically true but extremely misleading. There is of course always a driver in the car, but they have absolutely clocked many miles with a driver in the car not needing to intervene.
"Always a driver in the car" != driverless
You often see waymos cruising around sans driver. That's real driverless.
Very cool. Where? I don’t think I’ve ever seen it anywhere in LA.
https://waymo.com/tour/#schedule
Join the waitlist asap so you can get access when they launch in socal.
I would describe it as a system for rapid reaction and lane assist. It's very... very poor at self driving, outside of an empty interstate.
You could start me in goal for the Leafs and I bet I could clock many hours of scoreless game time in a season.
It's the 0.01% of miles where an empty carrier bag blows across the road, or a fire truck is stopped in your lane, or a kid crosses the road without looking, that makes self driving hard.
FSD doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs to be consistently better than the typical/average driver and cause or get into less accidents than real people do.
That day is coming - it may be TSLA, it might be someone else, but sooner or later you won't even be able to afford the insurance for a car that is powered by a human if FSD provably is safer in agrregate.
Would I definitely react in the optimal way if a person hit my windshield? I wouldn't bet on it, and I would say there is a nontrivial likelihood that I would accidentally step on the gas and run over the person. That's just the nature of dealing with a truly one in a million situation that I'm totally unprepared for (just as the autonomous car was totally unprepared for it).