The headline attached to the article itself is totally fair. Moreover, Gurley is quoted in the article, more-or-less directly refuting the predominant hype mode:
"The part we haven't figured out yet, the last 3 percent, which is snow, rain, all the really, really hard stuff — it really is hard," Gurley said. "They have done all the easy stuff."
This all rings true to me, though I'd say it's more like the last 20 percent, not the last three. Outside of silicon valley, weather exists, and it does bad things to the light-based sensors that these cars currently depend upon.
In the worst case, level 5 self-driving works out to solving AGI. We just don't know yet.
I think the most interesting paragraphs is this one:
"We (US) have created a society where you can sue anybody for anything," "That's (autonomous vehicles) going to happen first in Singapore or China, most likely China I would say, for a couple of reasons," Gurley said.
Unfortunately, in Europe we are moving to a similiar state of the society / law, with strong incentives for people to initiate lawsuits for personal compensation.
On a side note: I heard rumors that skiing in the US is so expensive, due to the high insurance premiums that the skiing resorts have to pay. Given the amounts of lawsuits that they are facing.
