As cars and trucks incorporate increasingly sophisticated automation features, the automotive industry must confront the approaching challenge of designing fully autonomous vehicles to operate on public roads. Industry participants—vehicle manufacturers, their suppliers and dealers—will need to think disruptively to mitigate the risks inherent in such a revolutionary shift. This Legal Update by members of Mayer Brown’s newly formed Connected & Autonomous Vehicles Group identifies key challenges for the industry, including the need to develop new and redefine existing supply chain relationships to accommodate the open architecture and iterative development cycles required for complex, interconnected systems; to adapt to significant regulatory changes relating to product safety, cybersecurity and data privacy; and to develop end-user customer service models that, in some cases, may sidestep the dealer network.
