How Ford has slammed the door on Silicon Valley's autonomous vehicles drive

One is the home of America's automotive industry, a heavily regulated, ultra-conservative sector focusing on high-volume, low-margin sales. They are also in competition to own what some are calling the next personal computing platform: the car. The recent focus is less the embedded systems that run vehicles – Linux won that battle – and more the data connections to deliver so-called "infotainment" to those inside and beam diagnostic data back to the manufacturer. Gartner reckons on a five-fold increase in such units globally by 2020 to 61 million. With those units come opportunities. Now, the sale isn't just about the car; it's about the subscription revenue that you can garner from apps and online services.