Competition does encourage action. Glad Tesla started rolling out their robotaxies.
First slowly and then suddenly.
There are 10 other companies that are currently testing without a driver. Those are competition.
Tesla so far is a gimmick of self-driving with a safety driver that takes over once in a while. That's where Waymo was more than 5 years ago.
Too bad the owners of FSD can't decide that they want unsupervised. In an earlier or different world that would be possible.
One successful ride is easy. 10 successful rides is still easy.
100k successful rides without a serious incident? Way more difficult.
And that's why those anecdotal reports over a couple ride mean absolutely nothing
This illusion is partially why Musk has been promising self-driving to be available at the end of $current_year+1 for years.
It's cool your car can drive itself. Now do it again, but fall asleep at the wheel. What's that? You're not willing to? That's exactly the core of the issue—it's not sufficient for the car to be able to drive itself most of the time, it must do so safely every single time, no matter what.