Most ride-hailing companies that invested in self-driving cars are giving up on these projects. Most of these startups struggle to sustain their business.
*Most ride-hailing companies that needed a narrative ahead of their IPO for why they had a defensible long term moat and leaned heavily on 'self driving' as their answer to that are now getting pressure from investors on why they keep sinking more money into a problem it doesn't seem they'll ever be able to solve
It truly is the issue of not knowing if it will ever be solved. The uncertainty of progress and uncertainty of a timeline is what really irks investors (who are right to question the investment given it is dragging down the not-quite-profitable main business)
I wonder what is the general feeling towards startups that take a different approach such https://comma.ai/ and https://wayve.ai/?. These startups take the approach of building "Android version" of self-driving cars, a technology that can be used as add-on in the existing cars.