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Tesla CEO Elon Musk said he has offered full self-driving licenses to other automakers.
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Companies like Ford and Rivian have announced in recent weeks that they will bring self-driving cars in-house.
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Nvidia also released a toolkit that lowers the barrier to entry in the pursuit of autonomy.
Elon Musk has called legacy automakers’ hesitance to license Tesla’s Full Self-Driving software “crazy,” but a series of industry moves suggests their hesitation is strategic.
In recent weeks, a growing number of automakers have released roadmaps for building key parts of their self-driving software rather than outsourcing the technology. The Tesla license plate could become a harder sell as automakers view vehicle technology as a defining part of their brand.
Rivian, for example, is moving deeper into vertical integration by designing proprietary chips for the brains behind the company’s self-driving computers. CEO RJ Scaringe even floated the idea of developing a robotaxi business at Rivian’s Autonomy and Artificial Intelligence Day in early December.
Traditional automakers haven’t taken the same ambitious route of designing custom chips, but they have begun looking for in-house solutions.
Ford announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas that it plans to develop eyesight-free driving software for public roads by 2028. The company says in-house development reduces costs by 30% and provides more control over how the software is integrated and deployed.
“I can’t work with all of these suppliers for the sake of integration,” Paul Costa, Ford’s director of electrical engineering, told Business Insider. “We need to bring these things in-house, and it does the triple effect: smaller, cheaper and higher performance.”
Musk said in an X post in November that it was “crazy” for traditional automakers not to want to license Tesla’s FSD, an advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) that the electric carmaker said would enable fully autonomous driving.
Musk said in the post: “When legacy cars occasionally reach out, they tepidly discuss implementing FSD for a small project in 5 years, which is an unfeasible requirement for Tesla, so it makes no sense.”
Musk did not specify what those requirements were. A Tesla spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.
Experts who track software in the auto industry told Business Insider that even with near-term challenges, there are practical reasons to go internal.
Chris Ahn, a principal at Deloitte, which advises major automakers, told Business Insider that companies must decide how much autonomy their customer base wants and how to achieve it, such as using lidar or just a camera system.
