SAN FRANCISCO — Self-driving car concepts are a dramatic departure from today's cars, envisioning living rooms on wheels with rear-facing seats and massive infotainment screens. Even if parts of these futuristic design experiments get lost on the cutting room floor as autonomous driving develops, it's clear that vehicles will need to undergo a fundamental change that's much less visible.
As automakers have added new functions to vehicles, the parts responsible for controlling them have multiplied, creating a complex architecture that has become increasingly difficult to upgrade. To facilitate major technology advances such as autonomous driving, manufacturers will have to make a 180-degree turn from industry practices and simplify the number of parts while increasing the power to run software.