Given Tesla's abysmal track record on keeping their promises I feel like it is justified to dismiss them, at the risk of being surprised if they do make it.
* Elon has been making wildly exaggerated and over-optimistic claims for a decade and continues to do so
* Tesla has recently made huge strides in capability and has a clear path to full autonomy
And to be fair, many other car companies also promised self driving cars, e.g. Audi in 2014 promising driverless cars by 2016 [1]. It's just that Tesla is still executing on the promise whereas many other carmakers have fizzled out on their ambitions. As the Rodney Brooks article itself mentions,
> As a reminder of how strong the hype was and the certainty of promises that it was just around the corner here is a snapshot of a whole bunch of predictions by major executives from 2017.
