They are good at building cars, but I would argue they are not good at building tech. Self driving is a technology issue. If the tech superstars at Waymo/Apple/whoever aren't even close to solving it, why would the software people at GM/Honda be?
They don't need to build tech. They can buy it. GM can write some pretty big checks. They flat out bought Cruise just to cover their butts.
When I was an intern at a defense contractor ~1/10th the size of GM my cube was across from procurement. I think a lot of people here don't understand the kind of scale companies like this play at. Your problem isn't "how do we pay for this" it's "will anyone sell me all this all at once or sign a contract to provide it all over the timetable we want". You make bets on how many times around the earth the welding wire you'll buy next quarter will go. GM shipped ~10 million vehicles in 2017. That means they had to sign a contract with someone to supply approximately an Exxon Valdez worth of motor oil and another of ATF just for their factories.
This wouldn't be a loss for Waymo if everyone was licensing their software.
They will license/sell it eventually when/if they will get it to work. What else would they do with that tech ? Last time I've checked Alphabet did not produce any cars or had any infrastructure to do that on scale.
They can hire the right people but the problem might be trust. IMO, no major car company wants to deal with Google, they'll be enslaved to Google who will tighten the screws little by little.
The auto makers are more than fine with incremental tech so long as it sells more cars. In some ways they may actually prefer it to the degree it accelerates upgrade cycles. Yes, there are issues with intermediate ~ Level 3 stages. But, in general, the car companies don't really care all that much about full self-driving and, arguably, would actually prefer if it hits the streets later rather than sooner.
The Waymo folks absorbed this, agreed, and said they would proceed towards full autonomy- I kind of get this, for example I don't even use cruise control and don't plan on using L3 autonomous because I worry about losing attentiveness and getting in an accident.
Whether (and you say 'arguably') they are actively preferring to slow down the rollout of full self-driving is hard to say; I think they're just cautious and don't want a few dramatic events to scuttle this promising area of research.
And there’s no guarantee at all that the incremental approach will lead to the same place in a reasonable timeframe.
So, risks all around. And people playing to their strengths.
What matters more is the business strategy, and articles like this are suggesting that Waymo's business plan will keep it from dominating the market.
It turns out that trying to compete with your suppliers is very, very expensive, especially if you try to make them shoulder the risks without sharing the upsides. And very expensive business plans require very good execution, which Waymo hasn't managed so far. They've already been rejected by 3 automakers (Ford, GM, and Honda).
'Tech' as a commonly applied label typically involves widgets and software. Not large manufacturing and supply chains that involves world trade, weather, regionalism, human resources in the hundreds of thousands and years of planning to work with many similarly configured partners.
Tesla for all it's glory isn't the greatest endorsement for Tech as some (not necessarily you) like to claim and I like Tesla.
Everyone that says car companies don't move fast seems to be picking and choosing the facts that suit their own bias towards 'traditional' industries.
Car companies only look slow on the outside, but they really aren't when you look at the totality of their products scope.
For example car companies go through millions of dollars in just testing alone with nearly every country operating their own testing center. They need to be weather tested in so many different environments, they need to meet regulatory hurdles that are different from state to state to State. It's just massive what goes into what they need to do just to get the right to sell their product in a region or country.
Yet they do all this with significant upgrades to models that are now coming nearly every 3 years. I remember when it went from 10 years to 5 years. Wow!
I remember when the assembly got so complicated that cars were squeaking due to the materials rubbing against each other. So in comes material science guys trying to get that sorted in all weather conditions.
I think Waymo is far more likely to be in the sidelines than people think, but we'll see; I could be wrong.
That said, GM (or any other BigCo) realizes when it doesn't have a capability and either decides to not pursue it, spin it up themselves internally (like in the case of EVs), license it, or buy someone who has it (e.g. Cruise).
>I remember when the assembly got so complicated that cars were squeaking due to the materials rubbing against each other. So in comes material science guys trying to get that sorted in all weather conditions.
Was that back when you could look at a picture of a Saturn and tell what temperature it was when the picture was taken? ;)
Big car companies can buy startups in the self driving space, which is what GM did with Cruise. Or they can license the software from Waymo or other companies who are working on it.
Self-driving software can be just another thing car companies buy from suppliers, like transmissions and brakes.
I think the combination of Cruise's expertise on self-driving tech combined with GM's on cars makes for a pretty serious competitor, assuming the two can work together effectively.