My thesis is that Tesla is progressing very well on FSD. Watching the progress happen is as easy as watching some videos on YouTube. It's really cool watching it progress, warts and all. Reminds me of how Google's language translation stuff progressed. They're crowdsourcing the work of teaching computers how to drive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2q96i2vf8oA
I definitely think that competing companies will catch up, but that it will take them around 5-15 years to do it. (It took Microsoft about a decade to come up with a real competitor to the original Macintosh, for example.) That's an eternity in business, so Tesla will accrue huge gains financially over that period and this first-mover advantage will give them a huge lead with the Tesla Bot.
I definitely think that competing companies will catch up, but that it will take them around 5-15 years to do it. (It took Microsoft about a decade to come up with a real competitor to the original Macintosh, for example.) That's an eternity in business, so Tesla will accrue huge gains financially over that period and this first-mover advantage will give them a huge lead with the Tesla Bot.