Let me emphasize this point for you. New vehicles are not only closing generational gap which was widening over last 20 years. They are actually leap frogging other means of computation we have. It is safe to bet that if you own Tesla or Rivian most likely they are the most expensive and powerful computers you have in your possession. And yes, you drive them around.

Let's take Tesla Model 3 as an example. It needs to process video streams from 8 cameras in real time and perform calculations fast enough not to drive you into a wall. As a result, AMD RDNA 2 GPU was installed in each vehicle. What's that thing? Well, the same graphical processing unit is used in Sony Play Station 5. So, Tesla is literally a gaming computer on wheels.

We can pull some conclusions from other platforms too. Latest generation of vehicles from Rivian is using NVIDIA Drive Orin for computation purposes. This monster can do 250 trillion operations per second (TOPS). Is that a lot? Well, let's see. If you own the latest Mac Book M2 Pro it has 12 CPU and 19 GPU cores, which are capable of 40 TOPS. In other words, your vehicle would be 6 times faster than your laptop.

In order to enable self-driving capabilities Rivian is also caring around 11 high-resolution cameras, including a few 4K high-dynamic-range devices (HDR). My bet is that this vehicle would also be one of the most capable video cameras that you own as well, unless you do videography as a hobby.

Fun thing is that people are NOT really amazed by all of those numbers because that is what they actually expect cars to be nowadays. You kind of look at all that and go: "Of course my car is smarter than my freaking vacuum cleaner, what the hell are you talking about". It feels weird that it was NOT the case for such a long time!

So, I would say that the notion of what is expected from a vehicle by fleet managers is going to be inevitably and dramatically changed. And rightfully so! It is just weird to expect people to install additional hardware into their cars to make those vehicle more capable, isn't it? It reminds me a bit of sticking your phone to the front window in order to have a navigation in the car.

Out of the box telemetry and sharing are just a byproduct of the generational shift we observe. If the software part is done right, of course. Which is a challenge for many OEMs. We still have to use hardware solutions to deal with the legacy vehicles. Because this is where the value is too. But all legacy cars will eventually be replaced by vehicles which could easily render "The Witcher IV" in a highest resolution on your TV without breaking a sweat. And somebody has to deliver them, integrate them and make them play nicely to the fullest of their potential.

That should be our goal as an industry as far as I see it. Well, at least one of them. Because parking is living in a pre-digital era still. But that is a matter for another conversation 🙂