The pro-Tesla view is that this is like comparing an iPhone to feature phones in 2008 on the basis of sound quality and keyboard action (unfortunately I couldn'

The pro-Tesla view is that this is like comparing an iPhone to feature phones in 2008 on the basis of sound quality and keyboard action (unfortunately I couldn't find their actual review from that year in a quick google). The question being: do you compare products on the basis of what they aspire to be, or what they offer today? Clearly the iPhone's touch centric design and App Store turned out to be a paradigm shift in computing, and Tesla's Autopilot hopes to be the same for driving. The difference as I see it is that the App Store not living up to its hype wasn't going to kill anybody, and choosing an iPhone is a much less weighty financial decision than choosing a Tesla. That being said, I think Consumer Reports could have done a better job of comparing the actual systems (or explaining why it chose not to), along with the exhaustive analysis of the ways in which use of the systems is curtailed for safety. What a lot of people care about is "how good is it at self-driving", even though the more important short term question, which they tackle, is "how well do its driver assist features holistically contribute to the safety of the car". Under this mode of analysis my decade-old Prius actually would do pretty well -- it has no driver assist at all, but at least it doesn't let you turn on driver assist at dangerous times, and tells you clearly when it's off (which is always).