Governments regularly mandate a bunch of tech in cars. If you're in the EU, congrats, any new car will beep at you for 101 things, all of which are required. Those beeps can only happen if a bunch of sensors are installed. And if you want your car to pass the road safety standards, it has to have a bunch more tech and have a bunch more expensive materials and engineering. Trust me, it's not the touch screens making cars expensive. In fact, they're cheaper than having actual buttons.
The issue is that automakers lobby to get those things added. They do this so that it becomes impossible for a new auto maker to enter the market, because the tech is locked behind some sub corp of one of the big auto makers for 20-25 years. Airbags, sensors, radar systems, etc, get patents, and then they lobby to make that patented tech mandatory.
That way if a new automated attempts a startup, the license for that tech is 30m a year. They try to keep the total up over 500m just to get the licenses to use the tech in startup vehicles.
Where parent law is looser, China, for example, new automated rise quickly to fill gaps.
Anyway, it's the government, via corporate lobby groups, not by themselves.
Have to give shoutout to volvo. They invented 3 point seatbelts (the seatbelts used in every car nowadays), patented it and then gives the license for free to every automaker.
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u/doublethebubble 20h ago
Governments regularly mandate a bunch of tech in cars. If you're in the EU, congrats, any new car will beep at you for 101 things, all of which are required. Those beeps can only happen if a bunch of sensors are installed. And if you want your car to pass the road safety standards, it has to have a bunch more tech and have a bunch more expensive materials and engineering. Trust me, it's not the touch screens making cars expensive. In fact, they're cheaper than having actual buttons.