For a long time now I have been referring to a phenomenon in autonomous vehicle technology which I call The Tesla Paradox. Rather than my overly-complicated explanation, I’ll let Brad Templeton sum it up perfectly in one of his recent Forbes articles.
There is an irony, since Tesla has built itself by making cars that are extremely fun to drive that have won the hearts of vast numbers of (un)petrol-heads. Now it will remove the pedals and [steering] wheel to make more money.
Consider also Cadillac’s Super Cruise, a pioneer in autonomus ADAS. Very fancy Mercedes was sure that you’d love extra fancy adaptive cruise control which they were first to sell using radar. Here’s a job ad for a "Senior Systems Engineer - Augmented Driving (Autonomy)" at McLaren. Etc.
On the other hand, Ferrari has understandably gone Amish. Perhaps a "Ferrari Paradox"? I.e. the most high performance (advanced?) sports car company refusing to acknowledge important new technology.
And now if you’ll excuse me, I need to continue my work making a fun-to-drive pleasure boat drive by itself.