Why? Even when driverless cars are standard, why does Uber need to spend the money building their own driverless car program, instead of just buying driverless cars from the manufacturer like the rest of us will do? Their business plan doesn't require them to build the technology, just use it. It would be like if Miss Cleo in 2003 foresaw the future was smartphones, and thought the best way to proceed was to start her own smartphone manufacturing company—instead of just making sure that she could get called from the smartphones that others were going to make.