I agree with you, and am in the same boat with most of my friends. I have friends that would normally be shopping around for a new car, but who are deciding to hold off a couple years because they've decided that their next car will be fully autonomous and they insist that it's just around the corner. These aren't people I think of as credulous or not knowledgeable about the technology- these are engineers in SV with many years of experience. I don't get it.
I really want autonomous cars to be a thing in my lifetime, and feel like this sort of optimism is more damaging to their future than people being skeptical or even down on the idea. The more people push the narrative that it's a done deal and just around the corner, with no infrastructure changes required, the more backlash (fair or unfair, it doesn't matter) is created whenever there's an accident involving autonomous vehicles.
In the meantime we have Lyft and Uber. I don't think we need fully autonomous vehicles to want to eliminate the need to own a vehicle that needs to be housed and stored for 95% of it's lifetime. Waiting for an L4 transport service is just an excuse.
I really want autonomous cars to be a thing in my lifetime, and feel like this sort of optimism is more damaging to their future than people being skeptical or even down on the idea. The more people push the narrative that it's a done deal and just around the corner, with no infrastructure changes required, the more backlash (fair or unfair, it doesn't matter) is created whenever there's an accident involving autonomous vehicles.