Teslas Can’t Drive Autonomously Around Parking Lots, but the Company Thinks That It Will Ship Full Automation by Early Next Year ⇥ arstechnica.com

Timothy B. Lee, Ars Technica:

In July, Tesla was still struggling to get the technology working. “Parking lots are a remarkably hard problem,” Musk tweeted. “Doing an in-depth engineering review of Enhanced Summon later today.” Three days later, he announced an August 16 price hike of $1,000 for the full self-driving package, adding, “that’s approximately date when we expect Enhanced Summon to be in wide release.”

But August 16 came and went with no price hike and no release of smart, enhanced, or advanced summon technology. Now Musk admits that the technology is still a month or two away.

Tesla is far from the only company to miss a self-imposed technology deadline — especially in the self-driving sector. We certainly don’t fault the company for delaying release of a safety-sensitive technology that’s not ready for prime time. But we do wonder if Musk should be more cautious about projecting technology release dates.

Elon Musk said in a 2015 interview that self-driving cars are “a much easier problem than people think” they are, and predicted fully-autonomous vehicles would be on the road within two to three years. He has made similar predictions that downplay the difficulty of shipping a car that can accelerate, brake, steer, change lanes, merge, navigate complex intersections, handle tricky terrain, and anticipate the actions of other drivers. Teslas can’t reliably navigate a parking lot in California, let alone the traffic circle around Arc de Triomphe — or worse.

This stuff is obviously hard. It’s possible that a fully-autonomous vehicle is decades away, if one will ever ship. Why does Musk so eagerly promise deadlines that I am sure he recognizes are impossible to meet? After all, it’s not just customers that he needs to avoid misleading.