I work professionally in a field where I regularly deal with the highway infrastructure and traffic operational issues with advanced vehicle technology. I advise my clients that they are not likely to see a dramatic leap in the automotive paradigm (i.e., fully autonomous vehicles on the road) for decades.
As one of my industry peers astutely pointed out in a technical journal last year, we are probably going to remain in a state of limbo for a while -- where people either trust the autonomous vehicle technology too much (like the Tesla guy in Florida who gave the vehicle's detection technology more credit than it deserved and paid for it with his life) or too little (i.e., people won't trust it enough to pay a premium for those vehicles).
Something to keep in mind -- and I say this as a professional who deals with motor vehicle safety all the time -- is that making a car "safer" and more convenient to operate may actually make it less safe in the long run. This is why I suggested in my previous post that you could largely eliminate the problem with distracted driving simply by eliminating the automatic transmission. Take out the power brakes and power steering, and you'll find that drivers will have their attention highly focused on the task at hand.
“I advise my clients that they are not likely to see a dramatic leap in the automotive paradigm (i.e., fully autonomous vehicles on the road) for decades.”
The predictions on this are all over the board. You may be right. I suspect it will be less than ten years, but only time will tell.
The technology is not the biggest delay. There is infrastructure, public acceptance, legal and insurance issues to work out, etc.
Financially, how long would it take to fully transition to self-driving cars if they were rolling off the production lines today? We still have millions of cars on the road that do not have these capabilities that would have to be replaced or retrofitted. That can’t happen overnight.