This is part of the long con. They promised FSD almost a decade ago and as their competitors eclipse them, it's clear Tesla is a) behind and b) will never catch up.
So instead of admitting they were wrong all along and doing what's necessary to catch up (add LiDAR to their sensor stack), they are going to quietly "pivot" Tesla to a "ai and robotics" company, with the monthly fee they'll continue to bilk anyone who is still enthralled enough to believe them on their FSD grift, but they will run the same scam as they did with FSD (Musk will say "humanoid robots for the home in in 3 years", yet we will still be waiting for them to be useful in the year 2035)
I'm not any kind of Elon fan, but I think it is a little more nuanced than that. FSD is definitely more advanced than any regular competition. It is not as capable as Waymo, that is for sure, but that is not a car you can own.
Apart from the technical limitations of FSD, Elon hasn't thought through the business model. Claiming that Tesla cars will be capable of turning into robotaxis seemed plausible a decade ago before all the negative externalities of Airbnb became widely known.
Waymo isn't just the Waymo Driver technology and sensor suite. It's charging and cleaning depots. It's product support both for the customer and the vehicle that scales. It's an insane amount of LiDAR acquired 3-D mapping data, plus real time data from Google maps and navigation.
Meanwhile Tesla has replaced some of the drivers sitting in the front seat with chase cars. Just to make the technically correct claim that the cars are no longer supervised by someone in the car.
I think I see it more bluntly. Elon knows exactly what his buisiness model is: hype. It has been wildly successful. The cars are okay, but the hype surrounding them is extremely disproportionate.
Their vision-only system will never live up to promises without inventing an AGI-level inference engine. Maintaining an aura that they are capable of doing this is part of the con. A kind of, shangri-la promise of harmonious one-true vision system that to date has not come true despite promises of its impending coming.
So instead of admitting they were wrong all along and doing what's necessary to catch up (add LiDAR to their sensor stack), they are going to quietly "pivot" Tesla to a "ai and robotics" company, with the monthly fee they'll continue to bilk anyone who is still enthralled enough to believe them on their FSD grift, but they will run the same scam as they did with FSD (Musk will say "humanoid robots for the home in in 3 years", yet we will still be waiting for them to be useful in the year 2035)