I think as far as technologies for self-driving automobiles and autonomous delivery systems, they might be hoping that their research leads to other inventions and discoveries. Look at the space race back in the 1960s. Yes we eventually got to the Moon and back, but there were a lot of benefits from it as a result of the research and development that was needed. A lot of technology that was invented or improved on for space missions lends itself to other fields like medicine, etc. I really doubt autonomous cars will be around very soon, and frankly hope they are not. Idiots who text and drive or in some other way get distracted are dangerous enough. A car doing what programmers told it to will NEVER react as well as a non-moron human. They will simply be too darn dangerous for many people to accept them. But I bet a lot of the technology developed through that research will find its way into automobiles designed to have a human driver, and probably some of that technology already has.