In asking that question, my guess is that you’ve never experienced being a Tesla owner. And that’s fair. I’m a Tesla owner myself, for full disclosure.
I’ve found that a Tesla is truly a computer on wheels; not unlike an iPhone is a computer in your hand. In many ways, Tesla is a software company that makes their own hardware. Unlike every other auto manufacturer, their software has full and complete control over every aspect of their hardware. Their hardware-software vertical integration is for real. They also have single software releases that deploy OTA to their whole fleet of in-service “devices.” From a software and release engineering perspective, incumbent auto manufacturers are decades behind.
> Nearly all car manufacturers have adaptive cruise control somewhere in their lineup
I’d argue the difference is that _every_ vehicle Tesla sells today is cable of being upgraded to the latest state of autonomy—just by an OTA software update and/or flipping some feature flags. While the claim of full Level 5 autonomy without lidar is controversial, it’s possible that most Teslas on the road today will be capable of being upgraded to L5 capability via a software update.
All that said, the QA issues in those photos are pretty jarring. No excuses there.