I'm going to guess it's the potential the technology has. In the US in 2016 almost 40,000 people died in car accidents and millions were injured [1]. Also the a

I'm going to guess it's the potential the technology has. In the US in 2016 almost 40,000 people died in car accidents and millions were injured [1]. Also the average commute round trip in the US is almost an hour [2]. Self-driving cars have the potential to eliminate a great deal of human suffering AND unlock a ton of productive time that has been held up in commuting (back of the napkin calculations suggest tens of millions of hours). If we consider what could be done with all of that lost human potential, the value of self-driving cars is staggering. Disclaimer: That doesn't mean that self-driving cars shouldn't be made and developed in safe and properly regulated ways. But the promise of the technology likely makes the engineers working on them feel a bit better. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in... [2] - https://project.wnyc.org/commute-times-us/embed.html#5.00/42.000/-89.500 https://project.wnyc.org/commute-times-us/embed.html#5.00/42...