Silicon Valley is known as innovative and disruptive, being proven time and time again whether it’s in the music, phone or TV business. And the Valley’s recent interest in the car market has not gone unnoticed by old-timers in the industry. Indeed, none other than the head of Mercedes Benz, Dieter Zetsche, has come away very impressed by the progress that Apple, Google and others are making in this field.
In an interview with German newspaper Welt am Sonntag the executive talked about a recent trip to Silicon Valley where he met with almost 70 companies to talk about automotive innovation. Apparently, as part of that trip he also learned more about Google and Apple’s efforts in the field and came away impressed. He explained:
Our impression was that these companies can do more and know more than we had previously assumed. At the same time they have more respect for our achievements than we thought.
Google has been working on self-driving cars for a number of years now and the company’s efforts have been quite public and quite impressive. Google’s cars have reportedly driven over a million miles with no major incidents. At the other end of the spectrum, Apple has not yet admitted publicly that it’s working on a car. But as Tesla CEO Elon Musk said, it’s hard to keep a secret if you hire over a thousand engineers to do it. Apple’s car is expected to be revealed sometime in 2019 at the earliest.
While Zetsche came away impressed with the two companies’ efforts, he also implied that partnerships might soon be signed between Daimler and other Valley companies. Mercedes-Benz has already proven it wants to compete in the field of self-driving cars and with this recent development you can bet the company will soon step up its game.
Source: Reuters