Here is a great piece that was in Business Insider.
The Silicon Valley explanation is sexier but wrong. Since Tesla's ascent as a wildly volatile investment opportunity began in 2013, we've repeatedly been told the auto industry is about to be rapidly remade by technology.
Initially, the action was all about electric cars, but they have largely been a bust. Tesla occupies a market of one.
Uber and its $60 billion to $70 billion valuation lent credence to the oft-debated notion that younger people would swear off driving and car ownership. But young people are now getting older and buying more cars. Uber is also in a state of near-continual crisis, and it has wasted an enormous amount of cash trying to be that thing Silicon Valley prizes above all else: an uncontested monopoly. Lyft, unfortunately, hasn't cooperated.
The third narrative pivot involved self-driving cars. This has been the latest gold rush, but if Fields lost his job because Ford couldn't figure out how to effectively communicate its efforts in this space, then we should really take a closer look at Silicon Valley's almost total inability to create any kind of logical business case around autonomy.
Google's self-driving podmobiles have been racking up miles, but as promising as the tech looks, its no closer to being widely commercialized than it was before Alphabet renamed its car business Waymo. Apple has ditched its car plans and now appears to be developing some kind of in-vehicle, self-driving interface. If there's a go-to-market, it's years off.
A lot of people think there's a business with this stuff, but, thus far, there just hasn't been.