Autonomous vehicle companies and suppliers have collectively spent around\u00a0$75 billion\u00a0developing self-driving technology, with scant sign\u00a0of meaningful revenue emerging from robo-car services after all that cash incineration.<\/p>\n
This has spelled disaster\u00a0for Aurora<\/a> Innovation, TuSimple Holdings and Embark Technology, whose shares have each plunged at least 80% this year. It\u2019s no wonder Intel just\u00a0slashed\u00a0the targeted valuation for its autonomous-driving business\u00a0Mobileye to about $16 billion, a fraction of the more than\u00a0$50 billion it reportedly had in mind 10 months ago. Cruise, owned by General Motors<\/a>, raised money at a roughly\u00a0$30 billion valuation early last year. In March, GM<\/a> bought out SoftBank Vision Fund at a price implying the venture was worth around $19 billion.<\/p>\n This is\u00a0what happens when long-gestating new technology meets the short patience of public markets and harsh reality of rising interest rates. Many of these companies raised tens of billions of dollars long before their technology was proven or their businesses came\u00a0close to\u00a0being self-sustaining.<\/p>\n The hype of the last decade or so and crash of late\u00a0is calling into question\u00a0whether self-driving cars will ever work. Anthony Levandowski, one of Google\u2019s early autonomy pioneers, who left for Uber<\/a> Technologies and was later convicted for stealing trade secrets, now runs a startup developing autonomous trucks<\/a> for industrial sites. In a Businessweek cover story this month, he argued that less-complex use cases will be the way forward\u00a0for the foreseeable future.<\/p>\n Morgan<\/a> Stanley\u2019s\u00a0Adam Jonas, who seven years ago ascribed massive value to a Tesla<\/a> mobility service that\u2019s still nowhere to be found,\u00a0said in a note recently that autonomy could be a 10- or 20-year proposition.<\/p>\n Companies in the space are now being forced to contemplate drastic measures.\u00a0Aurora Chief Executive Officer Chris Urmson sent out an internal\u00a0memo\u00a0in September raising the prospect of cost cuts, taking the company private, spinning off assets or even trying to sell the company to Apple or Microsoft.<\/p>\n Others have seen high-level turnover. GM CEO Mary Barra<\/a> dismissed\u00a0Cruise counterpart Dan Ammann late last\u00a0year. TuSimple replaced founder and CEO Cheng Lu in March, and its general counsel James Mullen resigned in September. Alphabet-owned Waymo<\/a> lost its chief product officer Dan Chu last month to 23andMe.<\/p>\n While executives and investors alike are in some cases heading for the exits, well-capitalized companies in the space are plowing ahead into new markets and projects.\u00a0Cruise plans to replicate\u00a0its San Francisco robo-taxi service\u00a0in Phoenix and Austin, Texas. Waymo\u00a0will start offering rides in Los Angeles\u00a0and\u00a0also has been hauling beer between Dallas and Houston.<\/p>\n