300k is peanuts, you don't try to catch up with 300k. Car companies spend billions on research every year. The car companies are farther along in autonomous driving than most people know. Audi, which is owned by Volkswagen, has done extensive development for years. 300k to a university is a press grabber and maybe focused on a specific, very difficult problem they all face which does not inhibit adoption of the technology. They don't want to spend the resources on it now so they might as well take a small bet to see if some academics can figure
It out.