This story was originally published by Wired and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. For the first time in four centuries, it's good to be a beaver. Long persecuted for their pelts and reviled as pests, the dam-building rodents are today hailed by scientists as ecological saviors. Their ponds and wetlands store water in the face of drought, filter out pollutants, furnish habitat for endangered species, and fight wildfires. In California, Castor canadensis is so prized that the state recently committed millions to its restoration.

For the first time in four centuries, it's good to be a beaver. Long persecuted for their pelts and reviled as pests, the dam-building rodents are today hailed by scientists as ecological saviors. Their ponds and wetlands store water in the face of drought, filter out pollutants, furnish habitat for endangered species, and fight wildfires. In California, Castor canadensis is so prized that the state recently committed millions to its restoration. While beavers' benefits are indisputable, however, our knowledge remains riddled with gaps.

Is this some sort of weird dream? It is, the scientists at the cutting edge of AI research would have you believe, a glimpse into the future of fully autonomous motor vehicles -- where you might still have to turn a key but you will not have to accelerate, indicate, steer or grumble about another car going too slowly. Once the stuff of wild fantasy, a world where the cars have no drivers behind the wheel -- where road deaths and injuries plummet -- is rapidly becoming more of a vision. Deloitte spokesman Scott Corwin -- the company runs a ''future of mobility team'', so keeps a keen eye on developments -- told the Financial Times this week that the automotive industry was spending massively to investigate self-driving technology, creating a ''race to win the Willy Wonka golden ticket''. Corwin predicted the roll-out of autonomous vehicles would gather pace but with ''limited market launches in pretty controlled environments''.

As it turns out, making cars drive themselves may have been the easy part. The hard part is yet to come. Over the past few days, the Financial Times has detailed in two reports how the autonomous vehicle businesses of Silicon Valley are beginning to reckon with a new issue: being functioning businesses. I understand this must be a new and troubling development for any Silicon Valley startup, but here, it sounds like a profound wakeup call. Increasingly, industry insiders recognise that commercialising their technologies may be more difficult than anticipated -- due to questions around "government approval, public trust, brand marketing, the ability to manufacture at scale and the technical knowhow to manage a fleet that competes with the likes of Uber and Lyft on timely pick-ups", Patrick McGee reports in his weekend Big Read.