Those SAE levels apparently don’t specifically mention the geographic range the vehicle can operate in [0], but at some point that’s pretty important. Having “full automation” on a very tiny section of roads is hardly what I would call “orders of magnitude above the rest.”
[0] edit: that's incorrect, L4 and L5 are primarily defined by differences in geography range.
Am I the only one seeing the change between l4 and l5 abysmal? Also L5 description, at least in the Wikipedia article, is much more vague than the rest
However, in terms of technology, level 5 is a big step up.
Consider for instance that a level 4 system can assume that the ground is purely flat (an assumption that Tesla’s FSD vector space makes), while a level 5 system needs 3D information to navigate some vertically-diverse terrain.
I'm aware. It's really between "maybe works, maybe doesn't everywhere (L3)" vs "works with no driver in a defined area (L4)". I consider the latter as more advanced as they are taking full responsibility for your safety.
It depends. If I could choose one car for person use, I'd take any modern adaptive cruise control + lane-keep assist system over an L4 that only worked in one city (even if it's a major city where I live). I'm not really sure how you determine which one is "more advanced," but I would consider the "level of automation" to be the portion of my normal driving habits that are able to be automated.
You're talking about personal driving, which is a different use case than robotaxis. For that, yes, you're better served with an ADAS system. It will take a while for L4 systems like Waymo to trickle down to passenger cars.
The point is that a "level 4 system" like Waymos is never going to trickle down to personally owned vehicles, because nobody wants to pay the hardware premium required for Waymo's autonomous system if it will be locked down to a specific city with specific routes.
Which is exactly GC's point – they don't want a car that can drive itself in Phoenix and SF and that's it. Most people either want a car that can make their life easier for a huge portion of driving but still require them to be in the driver's seat (e.g. Tesla's Autopilot) or a car that can actually drive itself basically anywhere (e.g. Tesla's FSD). Waymo's Level 4 just isn't that appealing for a personal vehicle.
This is why the SAE level system is poorly thought out and not particularly useful for anything except arguing over minutiae.
Expanding the geographic range for Waymo is straightforward: do the same thing in a new place (plus new hurdles like snow, but that isn't currently the limitation to growth).
It isn't clear how Tesla goes from "FSD" to "full automation". They are working on the "draw the rest of the owl" step.
I'd say the opposite. It is clear how Tesla goes from where they are to "full automation" – they just improve their models. Easier said than done, sure, but there is no conceptual leap required.
Meanwhile, for Waymo to jump from level 4 to level 5 requires handling edge cases which it is actually not clear can be handled by the system Waymo has built. In huge swathes of the world, weather conditions are not conducive a system that relies heavily on LIDAR / roads change too much to be effectively mapped like they've done in very stable metropolitan areas like Phoenix and SF / etc.
Said another way: our existing roads are built for entirely visual agents (humans). Getting a system that heavily relies on non-visual sensing (e.g. LIDAR/Radar) to work well on a specific subset of those roads is clearly doable, but that doesn't mean it can be generalized to our entire automobile infrastructure.
At some point "doing the same thing in a new place" is not going to be economically possible, unless the company is somehow able to continue getting money to burn (or unless they get much much better at bringing new places online).
[0] edit: that's incorrect, L4 and L5 are primarily defined by differences in geography range.