Can any one explain the Si Valley fascination with (driverless) Automobiles?
Having read a lot about the technology I think that true, SAE level 5 driverless cars are not on the near horizon. Maybe they will never come to pass. If and when they do it seems that current industry leaders such as GM, Toyota, etc, will have the economic comparative advantage starting from integrating incremental automation features (e.g. lane tracking assist, etc), into mass produced auto-mobiles. What explains the SV tech industry's fascination with driverless cars over the past 5-10 years? Where did it originate? It seems that there about 100 other areas where silicon valley could innovate, why did the SV big companies choose this seemingly quixotic quest? I am interested in what is behind it from an economic history perspective. You may disagree but it seems to me that silicon valley expectation and hype are even further diverged from reality now than they were during the dot-com boom 20 years ago. Is it a problem of too much easy money to fund Juicero-like startups? What explains it?
Wouldn't Alphabet shareholders prefer a dividend to wasting money on projects outside the company's areas of core competency on dubious products? Surely people understand that exponential growth can not continue ad infinitum and that it may be better to take profits than just piss away money.
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1. Economic productivity gains are measured in trillions per year globally. Expected value for the research is good. Transportation costs are significant bottleneck in the economy. They make up roughly 8-9 percent of GDP. Wages are becoming the bottleneck in transportation costs. Internet economy can increase productivity but but if the end people who deliver packets, move pizzas, or transport anything have hourly wages.
2. R&D into autonomous cars is related to autonomous robots, robot vision etc. Google is betting heavily into AI and driversless cars can be seen as one piece of the puzzle. Navigation in real environment and spatial understanding of surroundings is core technology in many other things.