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I think any such "vibe" is from clueless journalists and tech "influencers" over-predicting things either from simple total naivety or deliberately making out-there proclamations for more attention.
I think the main issue is more fear of unfriendly regulation and legal liability, and of bad publicity leading to the same. This manifests in several ways. First off, there will probably never be a personally-owned self-driving car. They're so complex and in need of constant maintenance and updates and being in perfect condition for the self-driving stuff to work right that nobody would ever be willing to sell one to an individual. Second, all the companies that run them are being very conservative about expanding their programs. Going too fast into new situations has too much risk of something bad happening. Third, the companies have a huge amount of control over who they let use them and where they let them go. They pretty clearly make careful use of this to not allow them to be used in any situation they think might be risky. And also keep all of the details about how they're doing that behind closed doors.
There's also the physical plant issue. Even if we had a perfect self-driving car ready for mass production today, it would still take decades to replace substantially all of the cars on the road in the entire country.
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