The fact that they've said it doesn't mean they're right. But I think most of their statements have actually about how L3 is unsafe, rather than the fact that i

The fact that they've said it doesn't mean they're right. But I think most of their statements have actually about how L3 is unsafe, rather than the fact that incremental progress is impossible. Plenty of the startups in this space aren't making cars, but buying cars and installing aftermarket kits. Otto is a great example. Or they could have done what MobileEye did and sell L3 tech to car companies to fund further development. I don't find the auto response particularly aggressive; they've waited 7 years to even start anything. The barrier to entry in that time has gotten so much lower due to deep learning that geohot can build a car that has some level of autonomy in his garage, and I think those advances were what really caught google flatfooted. Can Google keep funding a pie in the sky research project for another 20 years, which is roughly the timeline they've said about L4 autonomy.