That's really the only way their financial model can make sense.
They should really be seeing this as essential to their survival, like nuclear bombs in WWII.
Nazi Germany had maybe 1000 people working on their version. USA had 180,000(!).
I suspect in this analogy, uber is not USA. Someone else will get this rolled out first. But I'm not 100% sure.
I'm not sure that's true though; I don't get the oft-repeated logic that self-driving cars will save Uber. OK, they save on labor costs, but right one now of Uber's (slimy, IMO, but significant nonetheless) major savings is pushing vehicle maintenance and deprecation costs onto their drivers. They won't be able to do that with self-driving cars: they'll have to pay operate a fleet, in direct competition with automakers.
This is fallacious. The end-user pays for vehicle maintenance and depreciation. There cannot be any savings by pushing around which party writes the cheque as the only source of income to pay that cheque can be the end-user.
You will find yourself hard pressed to find a company, which is the first to bring something market and being in the dominant market position.
Self driving cars will be a commodity. Whatever advantage it gives, any company will have it, so there is no way it will increase the margin.
Let's put it this way - if you had the choice between paying 1/5th of what you pay now for the cheapest ride available, or half what you pay now for a ride in a nicer, cleaner car that picks you up within seconds, which would you pick? My guess is that with those choices, more people won't pick the cheapest option available.
Theirs and Tesla's, Faraday Future's, Ford's, Waymo's, Nutonomy's, Apple's (?), Yandex's, Audi's, GM's, Land Rover's, Hyundai's, BMW' and a few others I missed but that can be found by Googling "* investing self driving".