I agree with you that even limiting the operational environment that these things work in doesn't reduce the number of situations it needs to be able to handle

I agree with you that even limiting the operational environment that these things work in doesn't reduce the number of situations it needs to be able to handle by that much. But I wouldn't be too quick to interpret a single sentence from a piece of short-form popular journalism as a precise specification of what their cars are and are not designed to handle.