How many technologies do you see people working on where they say, "well we have one approach we think is gonna work, but we're also going to spend a ton of res

How many technologies do you see people working on where they say, "well we have one approach we think is gonna work, but we're also going to spend a ton of resources and time developing this other solution that would be useless if the first approach does work. Oh and it would make our cars 5k more expensive atleast."