Tesla had aimed to do a cross-country U.S. drive in one of its vehicles using fully autonomous driving capabilities by the end of last year. Obviously it didn't make that goal, or you'd have heard about it. Instead, Tesla CEO Elon Musk now says he anticipates being able to make the trip within three months, or six months at the long end.
Specifically, Musk said on an earnings call in response to a question about the autonomous drive that they'd "probably" be able to "do a coast-to-coast drive in three months, six months at the outside." When asked whether this feature would then be immediately available to customers, he did say that it "will be a feature that's available to customers," without commenting directly on timing of availability.
Musk admitted that he'd "missed the mark on that front," regarding the original autonomous drive demonstration, but he qualified that Tesla "could've done the coast-to-coast drive [last year] but that the company "would've had to do too much custom code, effectively gaming it." It would've resulted in a feature that others could have used in their vehicles as well, but only for that exact cross-country route.
Source: TechCrunch
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 09 2018, @01:23AM
If you're stuck on nomenclature then, sure, Falcon Heavy was significantly delayed.
However, if what one actually cares about is capability (which is what matters to SpaceX's customers), then the promise of what Falcon Heavy would deliver was provided by Falcon 9s, for many customers, way before the first flight of the rocket called "Falcon Heavy".
The "delivery date" of launching a Falcon Heavy was entirely hype and PR. For their paying customers, delivery is measured in mass to orbit.