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One or two vendors will emerge with an off the shelf solution, then third party fleets will integrate that with gliders from Big Auto. These alsoran attempts like Argo are a waste of money. Rising interest rates are improving capital allocation.
I love/hate that "drop" is an autoantonym. In this case, Ford ceasing its efforts towards self-driving.
I blame the business side of the music industry and its adoption of poetic license from the artistic side.
Seems to me that; if US car companies are giving up on the idea [Didn't Tesla recently announce similar?] then the idea is pretty much dead for now. I could just about see self-driving vehicles working in US cities with their straight roads and grid layout. But the twisty narrow roads of most European towns and cities would add a whole extra level of complexity.
Tesla hasn't given up. If they do they'd have to refund millions to customers who bought FSD. Until they get sued by some large group of customers I think Tesla will act as though it's just over the horizon until some big jump in AI tech actually gets them there.
You can give up without ever saying the words, "I'm giving up" which is what I expect Tesla will do and keep the money.
So FSD is dead for now. Many of us have been banging on that it's at least a decade away, if that.

Given this realisation, why are Tesla still selling this snake oil?

To keep up the charade with all the customers they already sold it to? It's like MLM or a ponzi scheme but dumber. If they admit they can't deliver it at all they have an existing number of drivers that essentially get an instant and "easy" class action lawsuit.
Perhaps a combination of sunk cost and taking in a lot of money from customers for the feature and pushing city governments to accept FSD? There are probably more reasons.

As a funny side note snake oil some species of snakes at least are high in omega-3 fatty acids. I blame shady sales people for giving it a bad name. I prefer Krill oil as it has a significantly higher bio-availability in humans than snake and fish oil.

Probably because they don’t agree with your realization.
It's because they've committed to the lie for years now and they've taken people's money on the promise of full self-driving that has still not been delivered.

Tesla has falsely claimed that full self-driving will be delivered "next year" for years: https://jalopnik.com/elon-musk-promises-full-self-driving-ne...

Tesla falsely claimed in 2016 that all Teslas had "the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver": https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-tesla-cars-being-produced-now...

And Elon Musk said that without full self-driving Tesla is "worth basically zero": https://electrek.co/2022/06/15/elon-musk-solving-self-drivin...

Tesla has pointlessly backed itself into this corner, even though Teslas aren't very good at backing themselves into any space:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsb2XBAIWyA

To those dismissing Tesla FSD as “snake oil”, I’d recommend a quick YouTube search where you’ll find countless customers using FSD without intervention on city streets with complex junctions and poor visibility.
In those videos, the drivers usually must intervene several times in a single trip across town. They are orders of magnitude away from anything that could be described as ‘FSD’
To people claiming otherwise, I would recommend a quick search of deaths caused by FSD.
Same way I dropped double dating Jessica Alba and Chris Pine. To drop something you first have to have it.