[etendue]

I am not trying to imply that people are having difficulty distinguishing fiction from reality.

I am noting that real auto companies have deliberately placed product concepts in media to prime people's expectations of what future products will look like and what they will be able to do. Independently, there are also proper level 4 systems under active development getting plenty of popular press coverage.

I also note that the very public face of Tesla frequently makes very public and (in my opinion, overly optimistic) declarations of their product's capabilities both present and future, for example (Jan 2016), "The Model S is 'probably better than humans at this point in highway driving' according to Musk." [0]

It doesn't strike me to be all that far of a leap for an average person to conclude that the future has arrived.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jan/11/elon-musk...