It is very clear that autopilot will be a successful feature and we can reasonably expect continued improvement in human-driver-assist technologies for years to come.

But people keep on handwaving past the very important gap between "automation which assists a human operator" and "autonomous vehicle which gets around on its own", as though doing well at the first problem necessarily makes the achievement of the second problem inevitable.

Driver assist technologies make all kinds of sense but they do not fundamentally change the nature of our transportation systems. They just make it easier to do a better job as a human driver.

Getting to the point where most wheeled vehicles are self-piloted autonomous robots with no human driver interaction...? I still think that's a really hard problem.