4 ms·
Toyota and other car companies are fantastic at building cars, yes. But autonomous driving is at its core a challenging software problem. No major car manufactu
by kajecounterhack 9y ago
Toyota and other car companies are fantastic at building cars, yes. But autonomous driving is at its core a challenging software problem. No major car manufacturer outside of perhaps Tesla has a track record of shipping software at scale. They're hardware companies.
Your sentiment here is like saying Samsung is great at making phones so they must be great at Mobile OS's. They're fundamentally separate things, and we frequently see that proficiency in one area doesn't necessarily translate to proficiency in another.
- AndrewKemendo 9y agoToyota and other car companies are fantastic at building cars, yes. No Toyota is fantastic at designing, building, marketing, managing logistics, integrating credit systems etc...for cars. Selling a Level 5 automated car is as much marketing as it is software. It could work perfectly but if nobody trusts it enough to buy, at a low enough price point, then it won't matter.
- simonh 9y agoIt's hard to sell something you don't have, and Toyota doesn't have competitive self driving tech or electric car tech. Arguing that they will be a leader in self driving cars because they are leader is selling legacy cars very much smacks of the "PC guys aren't going to just walk in" comment regarding smartphones. There's an old saying that goes something like: X + computer = computer So Teletype + computer = computer VDU + computer = computer Phone + computer = computer Computers and IT driven companies are eating whole industries.