It's super weird to only sell 100 of these in a single market. If it does what they say it does, they should be able to make a killing as the first mover. Just more reason to be skeptical.
What any sane engineer would do is to keep testing these cars with a safety driver and gather anough information/miles to claim higher statistical safety than a human driver, while keeping track that those miles were really in fact driven without intervention/(or with predictable and managed intervention). Once they would have those numbers, then they would know for sure that the car is safe and they could release/manufacture hundreds of thousands/unlimited number of units to the market. If they didn't - it means either the car really isn't tested or it doesn't do what they claim it does.
Releasing a 100 vechicles just doesn't make sense, unless the claims are somehow shady or misrepresentative.
Of course, if it _doesn't_ do what they say it does, they will, ah, also make a killing. Or many killings. You can understand the caution.
He also promised it by the end of 2018.
Oh, and before that, 2016.
Coast to coast means places like Iowa, Pittsburgh in winter, downpours, poor roads.
Not LA to SF on a perfect, cloudy (no sunglare) day on well-maintained interstate. Or a 14 minute video from a Tesla fan site that says "Here's a brief video of a 8 hour drive where, we swear, there was no intervention".