Is Tesla a serious competitor in this space? I know they've made a lot of noise about self-driving cars, but that all seems to be hype generated to sell more human-driven cars. Maybe I'm off base here. I don't really follow Tesla closely.
It depends on what you mean by competitor. afaik Mercedez sells a self-driven level 3 autonomous car where they even insure the driver/car, but it's pretty expensive. Tesla has the numbers, but not a single car that can do as much as the Mercedez. Tesla promises they can just push an update an everybody gets a self-driving car, but they've been saying that for... 7 years maybe?
From your link, the Cybercab is a concept with an unknown release date using technology wasn't even demo-able during the reveal. This seems more in line with my comment about generating hype rather than a convincing show of capability. Even if they do release it, which would be cool, wouldn't it be like a decade behind Waymo at that point?
It's still far from ready to release, but it is also improving very quickly - far from solely hype. They have the most impressive non-geolocked self-driving system as far as I'm aware.
