I wonder if that sentiment is changing.

Front camera is sub-4K, the rest of the cameras are 1440p.. all of which are processed at 24fps. We are talking 10 year old iPhone specs here.

I suppose because in the U.S. we are forever stuck in our car culture.

I tried to get into FSD but I felt that it made me an obnoxious driver. Chill is too slow and makes unnecessary lane changes. Hurry makes too many unnecessary lane changes while speeding beyond the flow of traffic. When you encounter a "mormon roadblock", e.g two cars going the speed limit on a two lane road, FSD goes into a loop changing lanes back and forth hoping for an overtake that never comes. If you're the type of driver who picks his exit lane early because you know they're prone to jamming and drivers blocking each other later, FSD will still try to get out of the merge lane to pass, ditto for busy intersection queues.

Removing the human driver makes one things SPECIFICALLY worse, and that is the ability to correct navigation errors and override sub-optimal routing. For example: there is one block on my commute where you can take either an uncontrolled left turn, or go up to a light. The difference is one block and the light is usually faster during rush hour because the uncontrolled turn takes forever to get a safe gap. Navigation always chooses the uncontrolled left to the point that you have to disengage. There's other quality of life issues too like wanting to approach your destination from the left or the right because you know the parking situation ahead of time. These can be communicated to a human driver. You can't explain that to Tesla FSD though. It's tapped into the car-machine-god hivemind and can't be bothered with instructions from mere mortals.

But I digress, I think the paid, semi-smart autopilot is their best product. I can set an objective speed limit. It stops at stop signs and red lights automatically. It stays in its lane until I tap the blinker so it changes lane. It can autopark. These things actually augment my driving and reduce cognitive strain while driving, while keeping me just alert enough. FSD is all or nothing while requiring full non-interactive attention like a sentinel.

...for Tesla. For Waymo they're already doing >250K rider-omly rides/week.

This company is so shaddy around all the driving assistance and FSD issues that i have 0 trust and will not until it is thoroughly investigated. They are quite behind other manufacturers on simple stuff like line assistance and automated breaking already, they are going out of their way to make every reported incident sounding that others are to blame, it just looks bad from end to end.

Rushing those robotaxis is just trying to hide the fact that they are quite behind the competition on all those fronts.

So just assume the information looks really bad for Tesla.