[Powdering7082]

Waymo seems to be a counter example here

[randyrand]

Waymo took 15 years and $30B to develop and is still unprofitable. By the time they make their money back it'll probably be too late.

[robotresearcher]

They’ll never make their money back. Autonomous driving is mostly software and will be commoditized very shortly after it works well.

There’s not enough money paid to drivers in the world today to repay the investment in autonomous driving from direct revenues. It’ll be an expected feature of most cars, and priced at epsilon.

Autonomous driving and the attendant safety improvements will turn out to be a gift to the world paid for by Google ad revenue, startup investors, and later, auto companies.