You're probably thinking of Level 4. No one thought Level 5 was coming before 2050 until a few years ago.
And Level 4 is already here, scaling up, while we're seeing the first real signs of Level 5 (Tesla FSD Supervised).
The progress here is staggering - I'm not sure why you're so cynical!
For those who live in SF, for example, the progress is obvious. Not speaking for the other person in the thread, but most people have not seen an autonomous car working in real life. Also, many had assumed that freeway driving would happen first (as opposed to complicated city driving), but it turned out that the velocities involved carried too much risk during development. I agree with you, there has been much more progress than I had expected.