I would have felt much better if the presenter could actually sit in and steer the thing off stage, even all it had was a DC motor hooked to a go-cart battery, at least that would prove there’s steering linkage and the wheels are actually connected to the drive shaft of any kind.

Well your assessment is somewhat sensible economically, the major difference is Tesla is NOT vaporware, they have running, functional and sellable products. Even with SpaceX, they have demonstrate-able rockets, and actual launch/recovery events with video evidence of actual functional units. Not a movie prop with a…

I would even argue this is a very far step away from even a running car, much less an autonomous family hauler.