Earlier quoted context omitted.
Uber predicted it was just a few years away in 2016.[1] Google's Sergey Brin predicted driverless cars by 2017.[2] BMW predicted we'd have driverless cars by 2020.[3] Supposedly sober industry analysts predicted 2019.[4] It's also worth pointing out that many of Elon's predictions were not predictions of a finished product, but rather predicting when Tesla would have a system "capable" of self driving, not necessaril…
It does seem like Google did figure out bulk of "it" by 2017. 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaOB-ErYq6Y
Whether Tesla is ahead or far behind others, they're the only ones exposing their technology to unsupervised assessment by independent third parties in uncontrolled, adversarial conditions. On the other hand Waymo have real, productive, actually driverless cars operating within geofenced areas right now. How do you compare the two? Anyone who claims to know which of the two is "ahead" is either smuggling in unstated qualifiers, or they're blowing smoke.