Nice write up and I agree with lots of it but it still seemed quite a bit biased. I have both, BMW and Tesla and find things like selfpark much better in the Tesla, where it's fully automatic. There is absolutely no input required whatsoever. Also, Tesla covers your rims if the car were to hit the curb. I think that's a pretty cool guarantee.
Comparing iDrive to Tesla's system is very subjective. I like both. I am very used to iDrive, find it a bit limiting though. Gesture control is a piece of cr** in my opinion.
To answer your question about semi-autonomous driving, I get to test cars and have driven quite a lot of different systems, and I honestly believe Tesla still has the lead there, even though the later updates made it a bit more limiting. When I just got the car, I could drive on autopilot hands off for 5 minutes, depending on the road condition and I absolutely loved it. Now it's actually set to a 12-second nag if it doesn't recognize torque on the wheel (not 30 as you stated) which is quite annoying if you know how great the system actually can be. Luckily I found a way around it though
. I drive 100 miles each day, 90% on AP without hands on the wheel and without issues. No hands on the wheel does NOT mean no attention to the road ahead. You still have to monitor the system and see potential dangers ahead to be safe, but it's not that often that I have to override the autopilot or do something.