The engineering problems were definitely solvable more than 15 years ago to someone with an understanding of the literature.
No, it wasn’t. The models and hardware didn’t exist 15 years ago. Unless you’re talking about some of the fundamental neural network algorithms, but even then those were made back in the 60s. Not 15 years ago.
15 years ago a self driving car (an actual one capable of driving on a real road with other cars) was an impossible proposition.
Up until the recent decade anything self driving wasn’t much better than thing thing: youtu.be/ntIczNQKfjQ