Billions will be blown in race to field first self-driving cars

A sensor is seen spinning atop a Google self-driving vehicle before a presentation at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, U.S., May 13, 2014. REUTERS/Stephen Lam/Files

The race to field the first autonomous car will be a Darwinian exercise, with more than 50 major competitors reduced to a handful of winners over the next decade, according to a new study by consultant AlixPartners LLP. 

“You’ve got 50 major players trying to develop autonomous software and you’ll probably get three or four of them who will win,” John Hoffecker, global vice-chairman of the Southfield, Michigan-based firm, said in a speech Tuesday to the Automotive Press Association in Detroit. “There will be billions and billions of dollars lost in bets that were put in the wrong place.”