I am still trying to figure out what started and sustained the enormous self-driving car hype of the last few years. I understand why people who don't know much

I am still trying to figure out what started and sustained the enormous self-driving car hype of the last few years. I understand why people who don't know much about technology would buy into it, but I don't understand why so many relatively tech-savvy people have bought into it and why huge amounts of money have been invested into it. It should be obvious - and should have been obvious when the hype started, as well - that to create fully self-driving cars that can operate as well as a competent human driver in a full spectrum of real road situations would require solving extremely difficult technical problems that are nowhere near solved and that cannot necessarily be solved any time soon simply by throwing money at them. So what explains the hype and the investment money? Out of the people responsible for the hype, what fraction were/are merely deluded and what fraction were/are lying?