Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Data collection that would take years can happen in weeks" I think that we are talking days, not weeks, or probably that Teslas can have multiple teams testing various hardware and algorithms at the same time: Tesla plans on producing 500k cars per year from 2018. If all of them have this equipment, and they drive a conservative 10k miles per year in average, Tesla will gather data from 5 billion miles driven after…
I don't know if any amount of data collection and model refinement will allow self driving in ALL situations. We always see self driving demos in California on very large roads, I'd like to see one in a small crowded street of Napoli or on a crossroad in Ho-Chi Minh.
I've seen quite a few Google self driving cars on Castro in Mountain View. http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4082/4939372588_47979bceec_z....
That picture doesn't do it justice during the most busy hours of the evening, where there's tons of people crossing and bicycles flying about in every direction.
Given that, I've never seen a crowded street in Napoli or a crossroad in Ho-Chi Minh, but I can imagine they are a completely different level of complex all together.
As noted elsewhere, the announcement was that the necessary hardware will now ship standard. Musk has said elsewhere that the software is many times harder than the hardware.