[thomaskcr]

It seems to me that Elon has pulled the pin in the grenade and is now standing there daring the regulators to do something. I think he has realized FSD is a lot further off than they are still saying - and it's an out for him to be able to say "we were sooooo close you'd totally have FSD if it weren't for the NHSTA!". Him prodding the director of the NTSB by posting her wikipedia page while ignoring their calls/requests seems supportive of this. If you were trying to avoid negative findings you'd be responsive to the investigation and recommendations. They've been setting up the "regulator" excuse for years even though no one has ever stood between them and releasing anything they talked about "regulatory approval".

Also - this seems right from the cult handbook - it's not legitimate criticism, it's the enemies who want the company to fail.

Tesla from top to fan has the most insane victim complex. They got years of completely un-critical press coverage about future promises Musk made. They are valued multiple times higher than companies that make more cars in 2 weeks than they make in a year. Their customer base is the most tolerant group of people in the entire world, people have returned leases with "full self driving" that was never delivered, then turned around and bought new cars. This is a company that has been completely coddled from the start.

[sidibe]

I think it's spot on that they want the regulators to block them now. Without that there's two options at this point, either they tell all the drivers they're not good enough, i.e. only 100-score ones get FSD for now, or the PR disaster of FSD accidents, extremely likely from the videos on YouTube.

Government stepping in would give all the customer angst an outlet that's not Tesla. Their marketing materials have always blamed the government (see "driver is just there for legal purposes" on tesla.com/autopilot) so this wider release may just be a way of forcing the government to make it true.