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In a move that could backfire badly, car manufacturers are working together to buy control of Nokia maps with the intent of blocking Google's development of software for self-driving vehicles. The auto-makers consider open sourced autonomous vehicles to be an existential threat to their existing business, and are prepared to pay Nokia more than two billion dollars to stymie the disruptive technology.
“The greatest threat to the automobile industry would be if Google developed an operating system for self-driving cars and made it available free to everyone,” said one source speaking with the WSJ.
http://jalopnik.com/bmw-audi-and-mercedes-benz-want-to-buy-nokia-s-maps-t-1702660909
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BMW, Audi, and Mercedes Want to Buy Nokia's Here Mapping Group
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Anyone can make an omelet with eggs. The trick is to make one with none.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by sigma on Friday May 08 2015, @12:58AM
Because making the rest of the car is easy?
Easy enough for Google to have already built a fleet of them [dailytech.com].
If you're thinking of autonomous cars as a conventional vehicle with a few gadgets bolted on to make it drive itself, you're right, existing manufacturers have an advantage. Thing is, the people managing those car companies understand that driverless vehicles are a truly disruptive technology and are looking a little further ahead. They're looking at a future where cars designed from the ground up to be autonomous won't be constrained by the need for all the human interface junk, nor the social structures around human drivers (parking, fuel stations, drivethrough food, shopping malls etc, etc).
One obvious outcome is that far fewer cars will be needed when a vehicle can, for example, drive papa to work, back home to drop the kids at school, come back to take mama to her job, perhaps refuel and and park itself, or more likely, be a pool/on-call car (Uber-style) for the rest of the day.
Car makers know there'll be a multitude of less obvious disruptions as well, and in that future, their experience and tooling is of far less value, and in fact could be a burden on their ability to adapt fast enough to compete.
(Score: 2) by fliptop on Friday May 08 2015, @04:18AM
Didn't this happen before [wikipedia.org]?
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
(Score: 2) by cafebabe on Friday May 08 2015, @10:25PM
Yes [wikipedia.org].
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