I had this somewhat naive view as well. But there&#x27;s actually some very good research and work done by traditional car manufacturers. Mercedes-Benz has done some very good work in the trucking department for example (from talking to some trustworthy AI researchers at a conference).<p>I do feel that Google (and Apple) have an edge. Traditional car companies (at least in Germany) are driven by engineers and usually decision makers tend to be ex-engineers. They have a subtly different attitude towards programming and software (often only working with Matlab and the like) and I often feel like software isn&#x27;t all that important to them. Alas software is eating the world is especially true in this segment.
I don&#x27;t know how to succinctly say it without sounding like &quot;ZOMG programmers &gt; engineers haha&quot; elitism but I think &quot;software first&quot; thinking and not &quot;engineering first&quot; thinking is the principle that will succeed in this space.