One of the major focuses at this year's South by Southwest conference was driverless car technology. The trend was well represented throughout the week with folks from the tech and auto industries taking the stage to explain what their companies were working on. While one might expect the players in the space to be worried about each other's advances, we found the exact opposite.
Chris Urmson, director of Google's (GOOG 0.74%) (GOOGL 0.55%) self-driving car project made it clear that the company isn't interested in manufacturing automobiles, but rather plans to partner with industry incumbents to put the technology in consumers' driveways. Later in the conference, this idea was echoed by Richard Pelletier, director of user experience at Ford (F 0.08%), who said the auto giant views Silicon Valley companies not as rivals, but as partners in the effort to bring autonomous vehicle technology to market.
In this video, we dive into the dynamics at play with driverless cars and drop some other interesting tidbits from our time in Austin, Texas.
