I don't think they're calling it "beta" to avoid legal liability. I think they're calling it "beta" to avoid culpability.

LOOK -

Elon Musk doesn't give the first fuck about Autonomous Vehicles (AVs). I'd go as far as to say he doesn't give the first fuck about cars. The Tesla Roadster was someone else's car with his money. The Model S is a battery with gewgaws on it, and Musk doesn't like developing gewgaws. SpaceX uses largely off-the-shelf components for their rockets; they aren't trying to emulate the ULA, they're trying to emulate Makeyev.

SolarCity isn't a separate company because of an accident of history or whatever. They're a separate company because of deliberate machinations by VC funds. Even now, SC isn't a solar panel company. They're a subprime lender that arbitrages utlity vs. end user energy recoup prices. Which, okay, is pretty much what it takes in These United States to get solar penetration up, considering the Republicans. But they put up a bunch of Chinese panels, a bunch of Canadian panels, a bunch of Japanese panels and then get paid like an end user while being a utility because being shady capitalists is A-OK but giving money to Solyndra is a congressional hearing.

Musk wants solar power, and he wants to go to Mars. Everything else is lateral. Tesla has "self-driving technology" because the Model S and Model X are drive-by-wire with a shit-ton of telemetry and because Musk asked if it could be done. Tesla's a cult stock so this is the sort of shit you need to do to keep the Kool-Aid fresh. But we're talking about a guy who used his Paypal money to buy a McLaren F1 to buy groceries with. We're talking about a guy who very carefully isn't saying fuckall about the sweetheart deal he got on the Gigafactory or the fact that he's building new Teslas at a used Toyota factory.

Right now, self-driving accidents are all anyone wants to talk about. So that's what he's talking about. Five years from now when he releases Part III (which will likely be just as passive-aggressive) if he says fuckall about self-driving technology it won't fucking matter. Let's be honest: he could annouce a partnership with Google and put LIDAR on the Model 3 tomorrow and nobody would call him on it.

Because in the end, Tesla is paying lip service to self-driving cars using an extraordinarily difficult approach. Google is putting in the silent, tedious work to build self-driving cars using the easiest approach.

Google is building a map of the Alps and refining their stopwatch. Tesla is pretending that eventually they'll be able to AI their way to driving better than you. The former is a well-defined problem. The latter is an open-ended clusterfuck.

And I honestly don't think Tesla is serious about it.