On reinvented wheels, early ideas rejected today may get a second life later, e.g. spherical wheels for moving in very constrained environments.
the iPod was not the first music player, the iPhone not the first smartphone. Re-engineering those was the only way to get them to market in a way that might drive mass adoption.
As for the spherical wheels, yes, however such a development is totally tangential (pun intended) to self driving cars.
I disagree. You seem to be discounting the learning aspect. Building an institutional knowledge base of the pile of systems that make up a car is a large task by itself. Different shops approach it differently. One may obsessively reverse engineer the competition, another might tinker with longtime designs.
I fully expect the managers in question saw the spherical wheels as something with maybe a 2% chance of becoming a reality, if that. The point at that stage is not to take a particular design to market, it is to explore the problem space, develop expertise, and work out what strategy to pursue.
From this article, it sounds like they figured out the strategy.
This is mostly likely not something that could be rolled out even in a concept car with present day technology unless there is some kind of trick that I'm not aware of. Halbach arrays are not without problems if you allow them to be unconstrained in all dimensions.
TaDa: the self driving Tron motorcycle!
It's a lot simpler with independent electric motors per wheel, but generally not that useful as self drivings cars can already parallel park just fine.
But those ideas are tangential (being generous) to self-driving, so better not steal cycles from it.