They claim that unsupervised autonomy in existing cars will arrive in California and Texas next year (with an easy bogieman that it will depend on regulatory approval), but no details as to what exactly this would mean.
It’s possible that they might be able to get an Level 3 product out similar to offerings by the likes of Daimler, Cadillac, and Ford - where on certain highways under certain conditions you don’t have to pay much attention but still must be available to take over relatively quickly if the conditions change. That seems the most likely route, although all other systems I believe rely on vision+radar or vision+lidar fusion. Those approaches have a lot more broad industry experience and quantifiable benefits in safety, but it’s possible Tesla has compelling data on the performance of its vision system, especially during daylight hours.
I’m honestly not sure how they could ship what they are implying - basically FSD as it is today but without anyone in the driver’s seat. That would imply they are (nearly) comfortable with it driving 10’s to 100’s of millions of miles between fatal accidents without any intervention. Either that or they are willing to ship and know it’s less safe than an average driver. That’s ignoring non-fatal accident rates.
There are some middle ground options where UFSD would have a larger set of conditions it can operate “unsupervised”, say in good weather and possibly daytime, and maybe only on some types of roads. But the edge cases where it transitions out of those conditions can be brutal and not easy to address. It’s relatively easy to say “just pull over and make the driver take over”, but especially on highways or heavy traffic that can take a while.