I think it’s irrational but from a different perspective: urban and suburban driving sucks - you’re paying a lot of money for a metal box you use to sit in traffic unable to do anything else, and do that for a fair fraction of your free time every day. Due to the 20th century decision to subsidize car travel at the expense of everything else, most people in at least North America don’t have a great alternative.

That means there’s a HUGE market for the dream of having your own personal chauffeur because that means getting a non-trivial chunk of their waking hours back to play games, watch video, read, catch up on work, use social media, etc. I remember one of the researchers at Google mentioning testing a prototype on the trip out to Tahoe because not being awake meant you could do a ski trip over a normal two day weekend.

That also means that a lot of people really want to be selling this product: millions of customers and they’re already used to paying thousands of dollars a year and taking out loans to get cool toys. That’s really going to skew judgement towards saying you’ll have it soon, even if you aren’t willing to cross the line into full Musk-level fraud.

I don't particularly like driving myself and I really want a level 4+ autonomous car but like most consumers my wants are tempered by my limited budget. If I could get real self-driving as an option for about $3000 per year (amortized purchase price plus annual subscription) then I would take it, but if it's $10000 per year then forget it. For most people, driving just isn't a huge burden and they're already financially stretched just paying for regular cars that don't have a bunch of expensive sensors.

Sure. I don't think it's irrational, either.

But from time to time I really wish I could just take a nap and not have to pay attention on long trips.

I would argue it's like home office before the pandemic: they just don't know they want it, but once it will be there — oh they'll know.