Also a problem that when solved completely changes their business model (not owning cars) into a different one (owning robot cars) that’s much less profitable and they have no expertise in.

As time goes on I find more and more parallels with designers and legal/policy writers.

One just builds a specification of a technical system while the other builds a specification of a societal system.

Societal systems just have much more legacy code and inertia with very little in the way of mechanisms for in house testing at scale. There's no development server, just keeping tabs on competitors (ie other countries) to see how the change in production (ie a new law introduced) had second order effects.

Ubers not been one to shy away from legal skirmishes though.

Even so, profitable self driving is binary; either there’s a human driver in the car or there isn’t. Uber is ”bold” but not bold enough to put thousands of self-driving cars on the road illegally.