You seem to be hung up on SAE definitions and missing my point which I'm going re-iterate, maybe from a different angle.
Moving from supervising the car to not supervising the car isn't a binary flip where suddenly in one software revision, you can take a nap while yesterday you couldn't. It's a spectrum. And that's why SAE levels between 2 and 3 are poorly describing this (not to mention how poorly level 2 itself is defined, as it covers a huge range of functionality, from something a bunch of cheap sensors can achieve with graduate level of CS knowledge to something Tesla AI has achieved with FSD Beta which has required custom computers, millions of miles of driving data and some of the biggest brains in AI world).
Since it's a spectrum, the only variable changing is how likely it is you as the supervisor need to take over control *because* your car either made a mistake or was about to. That's all it's reduced to — how often does you car make a mistake. That's all level 3 and up is. All the descriptions and charts do nothing but fog up this, which is unfortunate. Once you have a car that makes very few mistakes, you don't need to supervise it because the probability of it making mistakes is less than you as a human driver at which point it's a better driver than you anyway.
You can of course argue that reduction in mistakes is itself functionality. Well, I make a distinction between continuous and minor refinements and major enabling technology, like vector reconstruction of 3D space from images of cameras, or AI based route planning, which given more data, can plan better.
As far as I understand from Tesla's progress, they need to merely cover ever more corner cases to go up the levels.
And on the topic of supervision: whether you have to keep your hands on the wheel or otherwise supervise the car has a lot to do with policy and regulation. You can have a car today that is safe enough to drive while you asleep and good luck trying to sell it without telling the customers they must stay alert. This basically makes level 3 as defined in SAE subject not only to actual capabilities of a car but the regulatory environment in which it's sold.
> As far as I understand from Tesla's progress, they need to merely cover ever more corner cases to go up the levels.
I think this is the crux of the disagreements here. You say they need to merely cover more corner cases, while I think many (including myself) think that this endless list of corner cases is the primary almost-insurmountable problem.
From what I've seen of Tesla FSD (and competitors), these systems do pretty well in highly structured and orderly environments during clear desert weather. In order to deal with chaos in a blizzard etc, we're going to need far more than just a few tweaks. At this point, none of these companies are even doing any testing in extreme environments. They're still trying to stop their cars from hitting pedestrians in well lit areas on known crossing points. [1]
Moving from supervising the car to not supervising the car isn't a binary flip where suddenly in one software revision, you can take a nap while yesterday you couldn't. It's a spectrum. And that's why SAE levels between 2 and 3 are poorly describing this (not to mention how poorly level 2 itself is defined, as it covers a huge range of functionality, from something a bunch of cheap sensors can achieve with graduate level of CS knowledge to something Tesla AI has achieved with FSD Beta which has required custom computers, millions of miles of driving data and some of the biggest brains in AI world).
Since it's a spectrum, the only variable changing is how likely it is you as the supervisor need to take over control *because* your car either made a mistake or was about to. That's all it's reduced to — how often does you car make a mistake. That's all level 3 and up is. All the descriptions and charts do nothing but fog up this, which is unfortunate. Once you have a car that makes very few mistakes, you don't need to supervise it because the probability of it making mistakes is less than you as a human driver at which point it's a better driver than you anyway.
You can of course argue that reduction in mistakes is itself functionality. Well, I make a distinction between continuous and minor refinements and major enabling technology, like vector reconstruction of 3D space from images of cameras, or AI based route planning, which given more data, can plan better.
As far as I understand from Tesla's progress, they need to merely cover ever more corner cases to go up the levels.
And on the topic of supervision: whether you have to keep your hands on the wheel or otherwise supervise the car has a lot to do with policy and regulation. You can have a car today that is safe enough to drive while you asleep and good luck trying to sell it without telling the customers they must stay alert. This basically makes level 3 as defined in SAE subject not only to actual capabilities of a car but the regulatory environment in which it's sold.