By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake:
Many companies talk up their corporate missions and/or corporate cultures. But these intangible are, well … intangible. It’s hard to judge whether they really mean the corporate slogans printed on posters and tacked up on the wall. But, to veteran observers, there are clues.

Autonomous vehicle companies routinely talk about their “safety first” corporate culture. Companies in every industry spout mottos like “Quality is in our DNA.”

For an outsider, namely me, only one point — beyond platitudes and posters — is clear. They repeat these golden rules because they’re “the right things to say.”

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake:
Everyone’s mimicking Tesla, pioneer of the software-defined vehicle. Software will buttress next-generation vehicle architectures. But shouldn’t carmaker imagination reach further, to a vehicle defined by user experience?

The “software-defined vehicle” is a convenient and overused terminology when auto industry types discuss the architecture of future vehicles. The term implies a car whose functions and performance can be patched, fixed, and updated over the air. Such software can alter and improve control, for example, of a vehicle’s firmware and entertainment system.

But c’mon. Can’t we do better than that?

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake:
General Motors is throwing all the sensor technologies they can scrounge at its upcoming Ultra Cruise – the company’s next-generation hands-free driving system. Will that make Ultra Cruise a better “automated vehicle” than a Tesla?

The sensor suite that comes with General Motor’s new Ultra Cruise seems quite impressive. But what jumped out to me in GM’s announcement wasn’t the gadgetry. The grabber was the new claim that GM customers will “over time” be able to “travel truly hands-free with Ultra Cruise across nearly every paved public road in the U.S. and Canada, including city streets, subdivisions and rural roads, in addition to highways.”