Company execs sure did. "Autonomous vehicles" is the mirage that Uber, Waymo and others dangled in front of investors and press for years. Can't blame the public for not figuring out that it was a fig leaf to paper over their eye-watering losses.
I mean... company execs _knew that their VCs_ believed it, anyway. I would wonder to what extent they believed it themselves.
Upton Sinclair probably applies too:
> it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it
If you're Uber leadership, well, you're strongly incentivised to believe that there is _some_ way out, even if that way out might seem pretty implausible to a dispassionate observer.
Company execs sure did. "Autonomous vehicles" is the mirage that Uber, Waymo and others dangled in front of investors and press for years. Can't blame the public for not figuring out that it was a fig leaf to paper over their eye-watering losses.