I cannot beieve you chose to read his statement in the most optimistic way possible.
What he is really saying: "Tesla will most definitely NOT remove hands on requirement until Oct 2019 AND for unknown time after that"
I read it that way because if he only made the above statement then I would have summed that they were activating their interior cam and using it to do driver check. But then Elon rejected the idea multiple times ot the point that Lex was visibly shocked. Elon's response was that the system is improving so much, so fast, that it will be completely moot, pointless, irrelevant and unsafe and that this will happen very very soon and very very quick.
He said "in fact, I think it will become very, very quickly, maybe and towards the end this year" What will happen towards the end of 2019? "having human intervene will decrease safety. DECREASE!". So he is saying the system will be so good, it will be better than human drivers and towards the end of 2019, having humans intervene (alluding to the question asked of him about adding driver monitoring system for human supervision) would actually make it less safe.
So yes Elon is literally saying they will have L5 fully autonomous in 6-9 month, if not then he would be shocked if it doesn't happen next year.