The 10/90 rule is about how the last 10% of the way to a final product are 90% of the development time.

To people outside it might look like “it’s nearly there” whilst the domain experts know that’s not how software development works.

Your entire point from the start is that they can become a software company and sell they FSD system.

My point as an actual very senior software development domain expert with an actual Engineering degree is that whilst you can get to the “works 90% of the time” with hacks, you can’t get to the 99.999% (or whatever the number of nines required for certification) with hacks and judging from all I’ve read and heard about the Tesla software from usability and user interaction point of view (down to how the process for deploying it to user vehicle is sub-standard compared to just about any Tech-related industry but Startups) they certainly don’t come out as following the necessary engineering standards or even having the proper development process to have implemented their FSD properly and with a clear route to the finishing line, but rather that theirs is the same kind of hacky “we’ll fix it when it breaks” way of work as shitty-shit early stage startups.

How long they’ve been at the “nearly there” stage just reinforces my impression: I’ve seen plenty of badly done complex projects get stuck exactly like that, including over the years some of mine.

To me it all adds up to their FSD having a vibe of “stuck down a development dead-end”, though that’s just my gut feeling based on professional experience.

Your entire original point is indirectly predicated on a level of engineering professionalism at Tesla that everything visible from the outside indicates is severely lacking and supported by the kind “works most of the time” evidence that does not show they have the technical capability or even the software foundations to bridge the missing “10% of the way but 90% of the work” chasm.

There really is no amount of “nearly there” examples that can show Tesla has the Software Development and Engineering chops to reach LVL3 whilst Mercedes clearly has.

Then again given the conditions for LVL3 with it, it might turn out that the Mercedes one is also a software development dead-end when it comes to making a general use LVL3 FSD, just a different one.

It’s not at all uncommon for there to be several “nearly there but can’t get there” dead ends in the development of “never done before” tech before somebody has a break-through.

It’s just that from all I’ve seen coming out from Tesla, to genuinelly expect that they’ll be the ones with a break-through is very very optimistic: people who can’t even take in account the usage requirements whilst on the road of things like direction indicator toggles aren’t exactly likely to pivot to become successful providers of a complete certified engineering solution for the rest of an engineering heavy industry - even different teams are still hired by the same leadership with the same “value criteria” when it comes to selecting developers and building software development teams so the likelihood that the FSD team are pros whilst the rest are not is very low.