Self-driving cars have been “two years away” for almost fifteen years. Something has genuinely changed in the last eighteen months. Understanding what still needs to happen is more useful than the hype in either direction.

The technology itself has cleared important thresholds. Waymo’s fully autonomous robotaxi service is operating commercially in multiple US cities with safety records that compare favorably to human drivers. Tesla’s Full Self-Driving software handles an increasingly wide range of scenarios without intervention. The question has shifted from “can this be done” to “can this scale.”