[kjksf]

Jules Verne predicted space flight decades before technology made it possible.

In 1903, New York Times predicted that airplanes would take 10 million years to develop (https://bigthink.com/pessimists-archive/air-space-flight-imp...).

Many people who saw the first actual flights from Wright brothers dismissed them as a parlor trick that will not amount to anything practical.

Technology has a long history of exponential improvements. At first it improves slowly and then suddenly.

Sure, everyone (not just Tesla) was expecting self-driving to happen by now. It didn't happen yet.

I share the OP's perspective that the maturity of self-driving is already so high that it's a matter of time for it to become viable to deploy at scale.

The initial DARPA challenge was Wright's brother. We're closer to a plane that can travel halfway over Atlantic. Not quite there yet but it's just a matter of time until it can cross it.