The Next Step: Acquisitions and Open Collaboration Platforms

Recently, there has been great interest in connected vehicles and autonomous driving. Through the years, I have written about different alliances, coalitions, and partnerships between vehicle manufacturers and map suppliers, telecom operators, concept developers, mobility as a service (MaaS) providers, software companies, hardware companies, and, of course, other vehicle manufacturers. In contrast, I have seldom written about the outcomes of these partnerships. In retrospect, it seems the announcement of a partnership simply marks the beginning of an era, i.e., before the different players begin interacting, and, in some cases, the main outcome of a partnership is a good press release. Still, it shows that there is an interest to get a press release in a particular area, and that the area is important, but also that no real progress has yet been made. Furthermore, there have been many press releases about test tracks, field trials, and concept demonstrations. © 2005-2012 IEEE.