Luxury car manufacturer Porsche has revealed it has no plans to begin working on driverless cars.
Despite many top firms announcing they are looking in to the technology, Porsche has refused to jump on the bandwagon, citing consumer preferences for how they experience high-powered vehicles.
Company chief executive Oliver Blume told German newspaper Westfalen-Blatt that people wanted “to drive a Porsche by oneself” rather than having the cars drive themselves.
“I am impressed by the technology dynamics of (technology companies),” he added, “We can only learn from them and we have to see how it works with our expertise.”
“Can Apple build a comparable Porsche? No. Will Apple build a Porsche? No.”
This is slightly surprising, given that Volkswagen, Porsche’s parent company, signed a deal with Chinese technology heavyweight Huawei last May to co-operate on car connectivity.
Driverless cars are increasingly proving a popular choice for car makers and governments eager to sponsor the next generation of innovation. Last month, the Obama administration announced it would be working with several major companies to use $4bn (£2.8bn) of funding over the next decade to support the development of autonomous vehicles.
Gartner predicted earlier this year that the number of connected ‘smart’ cars, able to monitor the environment around them and possibly even drive themselves, will skyrocket in the next few years.
It predicted that by 2020, over a quarter of a billion connected vehicles will be on the world’s roads as the technology implanted in them improves. That equates to around one in every five cars on the planet.
In the driving seat about connected cars? Take our quiz!
TikTok's 'secret source' algorithm is so core to ByteDance, it would rather shut down US…
After relocating from California to Texas in 2020, Oracle's Larry Ellison now reveals plan to…
Share price hit after Meta admits heavy AI spending plans, after posting strong first quarter…
For third time Google delays phase-out of third-party Chrome cookies after pushback from industry and…
Elon Musk firm touts cheaper EV models, as profits slump over 50 percent in the…
Bad news for Tim Cook, as Counterpoint records 19 percent fall in iPhone sales in…