>Yeah, but when you sell them to the public, you can't stop people from driving into other states or areas where conditions are less favorable; which I think is relevant and applicable to their original argument that actually having self-driving cars out in the market is further out than what the industry is saying.

You actually can. For instance - radar detectors are legal in some states and not others. If you cross that state line you can be pulled over and cited immediately.

Or to go one step further, you could be driving a truck carrying a load that's perfectly legal in the state you left, cross state lines, and be stopped: https://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/freight/policy/rpt_congress/truck_s...