This is true, however it has been improving quickly. Releases are coming once every couple of months. There is already a newer release than the ones they tested, and each release is noticeably better. There is no indication of a ceiling yet.

I do take issue with the claim that "its seeming infallibility in anyone's first five minutes of FSD operation breeds a sense of awe that unavoidably leads to dangerous complacency". Waymo claims this as well, citing it as the reason they never released a driver assistance feature and went for full autonomy instead. However, this is is essentially speculation that has not been borne out in practice. There has been no epidemic of crashes from people abusing Autopilot or FSD. It's been on the roads for years. If "dangerous complacency" was a real problem we it would be blindingly obvious from the statistics by now. There have been just a few well publicized cases but statistically there is no evidence that this "dangerous complacency" problem is worse than normal driving.