Some of its 1,800-odd employees, already reduced by summer layoffs, are to be offered jobs to “work on automated technology with either Ford or Volkswagen,” Catherine Johnsmeyer, an Argo spokesperson, said in a statement.They’ve given up spending heavily in hopes of a monster payout some distant self-driving tomorrow and prefer to back technologies they can sell to car buyers today.The company was founded in 2017 with a nearly $1 billion investment from Ford, which was then eager to catch up with the autonomous Joneses—Google, Uber, General Motors, and VW.In addition to the backing of big names like Ford and Volkswagen, it received funding from partner Lyft, Uber’s ride-hailing rival.Overall, some $100 billion has been poured into the AV industry, he estimated, “and yet no one has defined a profitable business model at scale.”For the accountants at auto giant Ford, the math of Argo, which took in more than $3 billion during its brief life, just didn’t add up."