Samsung and Harman pitch DRVLINE as an open autonomous driving platform for car makers, plan a new DRVLINE camera this year, and showcase “digital cockpit”
Cho Mu-Hyun / ZDNet :
Context & Ripple Effects
DRVLINE is the payoff of a two-year build-out: Samsung formed its automotive team focused on infotainment and autonomous driving in late 2015, then seeded the technology stack with its $300M Automotive Innovation Fund and a $90M stake in safety-software developer TTTech. Acquiring Harman gave it the customer relationships to actually sell that stack into car makers.
The pitch lands on a crowded CES stage: Intel's Mobileye detailed its own EyeQ4-based autonomy roadmap and road-experience data harvesting the same day, making 'open platform versus integrated stack' the defining split of the show.
First-order effects
- Car makers evaluating autonomy suppliers gain an explicitly open alternative to Mobileye's tightly integrated EyeQ-plus-mapping approach, forcing an early architecture decision between modularity and turnkey systems.
- Samsung converts Harman from an audio-and-cockpit supplier into the front door for a full driving platform, with the planned DRVLINE camera putting Samsung hardware directly into the sensor chain.
Second-order effects
- Intel-Mobileye must defend its closed model against the openness argument, while Qualcomm's later Snapdragon Drive Pilot end-to-end platform shows rivals answering with their own full stacks rather than ceding the layer.
- Tier-one sensor and camera suppliers face a new competitor that bundles silicon, software, and cockpit displays — pressure that culminates years later in Harman's €1.5B purchase of ZF's radar and driver-assistance computing business.
Third-order effects
- If the open-platform pattern holds, autonomy supply consolidates around a few full-stack electronics giants — Samsung's Exynos Auto V9 winning Audi's 2021 infotainment slot is the template — squeezing mid-size traditional suppliers out of the compute layer.
- Car makers' choice between open modular platforms and integrated stacks becomes a structural fork: openness preserves their control over the driving experience but shifts long-term value toward whoever owns the software layer.
The trend: Consumer-electronics companies are using open-platform pitches to convert smartphone-scale silicon and sensor businesses into tier-one positions in autonomous driving.