I am not willing to make this prediction, but I’d be interested in hearing if anyone thinks we will NOT see fully autonomous vehicles on the road by 2030. Even in 2010, it seemed just around the corner — but that turned out to be wrong.
However, if by this you mean "autonomous vehicles that are clearly superior to reasonable human drivers under all reasonably frequent scenarios (including inclement weather) in any developed country" then yes, I feel very confident we won't see that in the next decade, probably two. I think the hyperoptimistic HN bubble is extremely far off the mark with respect to autonomous vehicles and always has been.
If anything were to get in the way of fully autonomous vehicles by 2030, I would think it will be a government's lack of political will to create the infrastructure or regulation needed for driverless vehicles.
What matters is if they're economically feasible by 2030, and say have 100M or 1B customers. Is Waymo bigger than what Google search is now, or another self-driving company bigger than Facebook?
My answer is no for consumer applications, e.g. rideshare. I wrote in this thread:
Self-driving cars won't impact the average consumer in the next 10 years. It will continue to be cheaper to operate rideshares with human drivers in most parts of the world and most terrains/climates. It will make sense for commercial applications though.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21942100
[1] There are people in this thread arguing that this has already been achieved. I don't agree, but if the threshold is one car demonstrating one thing, then meh I might not argue.
("widely available for sale to the public": at least as available as a Tesla is right now.)
On the other hand, I predict that lots of cars will have emergency auto-assist features: collision avoidance warnings, lane-keeping assistance, seatbelt tighteners, and perhaps a last-action feature that evaluates whether it's best to slam on the brakes, veer sharply (and in what direction?) or try to accelerate out of danger -- and then applies that action without driver input.
The interesting question is which company is bold enough to do it first and if it will survive the law suits afterwards. Tesla is the most likely.
L4/5 will realize in limited scenarios (senior communities, hub-to-hub trucks) but not as taxis in dense cities. In other words Waymo will still use safety drivers in ten years or close down.
(80% confidence in my statements)
I don't think we will in any widespread way. Perhaps we'll see some in very limited deployments, both in terms of the number of vehicles and what roads they'll operate on.
I.e. self driving Ubers will be geo-fenced to suburban areas away from unpredictable city conditions, and used for local deliveries (think pizza, uber eats) and perhaps long-haul highway trucks (which pretty much drive straight for fifteen hours anyway).
Self driving in every consumer vehicle will be in the 2030s.