Not everyone trying to make self-driving cars a reality aren't looking to enter the manufacturing and distribution business though.<p>There's a case to be made that is self-driving technology becomes commoditized then GM, Ford, etc. will be the "winners". I don't think that's the assumption the non-manufacturing companies are operating under. Time will tell.
I think this is a decent article but the headline is horribly editorialized. The study in question makes some good points, but it really is just one guess at how things will go. A good example is the discussion of Waymo:<p>> Waymo, by comparison, scores top marks for technology but drags in the production strategy and sales, marketing, and distribution buckets. The company plans to work with legacy automakers to put its tech in cars, but has not yet struck any major deals. “They have almost every piece of this—except the product strategy,” says Abuelsamid.<p>Is the implication that Waymo will just leap into first as soon as it strikes a deal with a legacy auto maker? The article admits that the study had massive movements between this years and last, partly due to deals and the like.<p>This headline is definitely not HN quality.
This was a key quote (either from the article or one of the linked articles)<p>"“It’s a lot easier for the company that actually has the infrastructure to create vehicles to recreate what Uber’s done, than the other way around,” Abuelsamid says."<p>This is the key. There are Uber clones done by kids in basements. There aren't Ford 150 pickup clones.