Winter is coming for car manufacturers. An Autonomous Winter, without end. If you’ve seen what Tesla is doing with Autopilot, and all they plan to do with it, you’ve already seen the future. Now it’s up to automakers to figure out what they want to be in this new world as quickly as possible.

Don’t think so? It’s because no one can remember anything that happened before the VW emissions scandal. While everyone is talking about the future of diesel and the consequences for VW, two big announcements were made around the Frankfurt Auto Show have been mostly forgotten: Google’s hiring of former head of Hyundai Motors America John Krafcik as CEO of their Self-Driving Car Project, and Daimler CEO Dieter Zetsche’s claim that “we do not plan to become the Foxconn of Apple.”

No matter how cataclysmic the fallout of the VW scandal, trust me, these two items are bigger long-term. We’re talking about setting the scene for things that are decades into the future, not just years.

http://jalopnik.com/the-autonomous-winter-is-coming-1736684890