> While there is no doubting the scale of this industry, with billions being invested every year, none of the OEMs has yet made a penny from selling a driverles

> While there is no doubting the scale of this industry, with billions being invested every year, none of the OEMs has yet made a penny from selling a driverless car. This money, benefiting these exhibitors, is therefore a punt, a high-stakes bet there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. For OEMs, I think it's less about a pot of gold and more of a defensive move. They're willing to throw money at trying to mitigate a huge business risk. These companies might not know (or even have an opinion on) how close the leaders like Waymo are to making it work. But they know that, if it does work, a new era will begin when nobody will be able to sell a car without it. And it's almost moot whether they believe it will work. They're protected as long as they're putting sufficient resources into it that they stay roughly as far along as others.