I’ve heard the same but I think the question is “is autopilot worth basing your entire car purchase around it?” and “will competitors be able to replicate Tesla’s success?”.
If autopilot is basically the only thing Tesla has going for it then they’ve got a risky path ahead of them.
From personal experience: "yes, no question", and "maybe though it'll take a long time and a lot of compute and training data". The day level 3 automation (basically what Tesla's FSD is, even though it's classified as level 2) comes to some other car, I'll strongly consider switching.
Maybe a stock crash and total failure of Tesla will be the best thing that happens. The US government (assuming us citizens can somehow continue to claw it back) or some benevolent entity can buy the ML models for cheap and open source them. It's really their only truly valuable, resilient asset, IMO.
> “is autopilot worth basing your entire car purchase around it?”
Unsupervised FSD is, yes.
> and “will competitors be able to replicate Tesla’s success?”.
I wouldn't bet on a big auto-maker, personally. But maybe they can outsource it. And...well, AI. Things are moving fast. But I think the moat can hold for a while.
For me, even now it's worth basing the entire purchase around it. Competitor auto-makers, if they executed perfectly, would need 4-5 years to get to catch up to where Tesla is now in autonomous driving; so probably a lot longer in reality.
I loved how the Cybertruck looked but when I test-drove it, I realized it wasn't for me. Tesla can now do a Rivian R1 or Hyundai Palissade type design and do well. But they will prioritize the cab since they got it to the current scale pretty quickly and it will be a money printer for them.
> *”will competitors be able to replicate Tesla’s success?”
Tech first companies like Waymo: yes, clearly.
OEM US automakers? Not a chance, not ever. They can’t do a simple infotainment system to save themselves. If they want to “auto” driving, they’re going to license it from some other company.