It looks to me like Tesla's an AI company masquerading as a car maker with the real goal to take in as much data as necessary for their various AI projects to succeed.
Fact 1: Tesla is attempting to develop a self-driving system that is based on machine learning.
Fact 2: Training machine learning systems requires training data. Having large amounts of real training data is highly desirable.
So a single step?
I'm sure that Tesla also benefits from being able to defend against false claims that would tarnish their image[1], but please don't be disingenuous about their machine learning goals.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2021/01/08/tes...
Tesla is trying to fix left turn regressions [1] in an if statement it introduced with its latest over the air update. Working on getting an iteratively better lane / cruise control assist is something many auto companies are doing, and that also doesn't make them AI companies.
1 - https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1451907229796417542
Edit:
By the way, here's Elon re: machine learning and Tesla.