Tesla's take home coding challenge

Tesla recruiter contacted me on LinkedIn saying that I would be a good fit for their Autopilot, Deep Learning Engineer/Scientist role. I agree that I would be a good fit since I have a PhD in ML/CV. We spoke over the phone for 30-40 mins to get a better understanding of the role. After the call, the recruiter emailed me saying that it was great to talk to me. The next steps would be to go through a take-home coding exercise. This interview would contain an open-ended programming question and I would have to design and code up the solution in four hours. If the code is deemed acceptable, I would be invited for a phone screen/virtual onsite. I rejected this round of the interview and told that recruiter that I am not interested in working through a take home coding exercise. It is not a good use of my time. The recruiter got back to me after five days and said that the team had reviewed my resume and had decided that I would indeed be a good fit for the job. They were willing to proceed with the phone screen. At this point I declined to proceed with the interview. 1. Most of us here would put in our best effort and that would expend a significant amount of mental energy to work through the coding challenge. If I am spending 1 hour of my time for Tesla, I expect a Tesla engineer of the same level as me to spend one hour to get to know me. 2. Interviews are a two-way street. I need to judge the calibre of my interviewer as well to make a decision. Take-home coding challenges are basically free for Tesla. 3. The fact that they agreed to proceed with a phone screen without proceeding with the challenge showed that the coding challenge was not important. I do not appreciate companies making me jump through hoops that are unnecessary and it put me off.