I agree with your professor. It’s one of these things that people have a hard time understanding. A lot of folks can easily imagine the end-state, but have no clue what has to be solved to arrive there. A lot of folks think that projects in electronics, software engineering, computing, etc. are just a linear march from beginning to end; failure is a human or resource problem. In reality, there are problems out there that get exponentially harder to pull off with linear inputs, which is much harder to imagine let alone a great way to scare off investors.

In this case, the framing of the problem is all wrong. We’re not trying to solve “a car that drives itself” (e.g. autopilot). Instead we are “simulating human sensory organs and cognition in order to pilot a vehicle without catastrophe or injury.” The latter is much harder to solve, but IMO, is a much more realistic portrayal of the job.