Amazing! He studied and compared all other driver-less cars to Google's and came to this conclusion.
I know a writer getting paid for clicks wouldn't forget that virtually every major car company is working on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driverless_car#History
How big would computers be today without the GUI, with a different system.
Sometimes you need a outsider to show you how powerful your own work can be.
There's clearly going to be a huge market for commodity solutions, and the economies of scale and the network effects suggest that it should narrow down to a few main ones.
Is Google's going to be one of those successful ones? Impossible to say for sure, but they do have a couple of huge advantages. They already have the geodata (all car manufacturers would still need to pay either Google or Nokia for that, even if they wrote their own software). And if I were a car manufacturer, I'd rather not license software from a direct competitor, but from an outsider. It certainly seems worth a bet.
Wrong answer. The car companies that currently have their own projects:
Audi / BMW / Ford / GM / Honda / Hyundai / Lexus / Mercedes-Benz / Nissan / Porsche / Tesla / Toyota / Volkswagen / Volvo
And remind me again who would want to license technology from a company who has zero experience in delivering mission critical solutions.
Plus cars are 10-20 year commitments, is Google going to be there and still interested in this? I am not even mentioning the strings Google might attach, like using Google Tires to be "compliant and be able to use the {brand}" (see Android)
There are almost more car brands than car designs.