[ibero]

my personal belief is that driverless car hype was the by-product of the "gig economy"/uber success story. and in that march for IPO, uber had to address its largest problem re: scalability-- human drivers. this issue of scaling drivers was seen as the achilles heel of its technology play.

as a result they went deep into investing into the idea of driverless car technology, more for show than in reality. yes, hundreds of millions (billions overall) where dumped into this sector but it was really motivated by the incentive to keep a valuation high.

this "driverless" story picked up steam because it resonated with a lot of tech companies, similarly looking to move the needle in their valuations. for big giant tech companies this was alluring as there aren't that many single plays or markets you can do to move the company share price. so here came in google, head first, and apple still tentatively.

and then crucially, for established dinosaurs like Ford or GM, the opportunity to create tech valuations for themselves similarly appeared. so they jumped in.

all in all, we are still feeling the after effects of this uber story play out, with dwindling returns and ever reducing pile of money behind it.

[iknowstuff]

Wow the cynicism. Waymo is successfully providing self driving rides TODAY. Tesla is actively trying to leverage their lean manufacturing prowess to provide this service en masse via FSD.