[danmaz74]

All technologies used in the iPhone were proven - what Apple did right is to combine them in a much better way than the previous iterations.

With self driving cars, it's not about usability/utility, it's still about having the basic tech work.

[dkonofalski]

That's like saying that the first mobile phone used technologies that were all proven and that the inventors just combined them in a much better way because radios and phones existed. The combination itself is exactly what made it an invention and a revolution. Nearly every technology right now that's a revolution (Uber, for example) is a revolution precisely because it did something that's never been done before by standing on the shoulders of what came before it. The difference is that the combination and or features gained from that combination allowed the invention to leap frog over what existed before it.