Some self-driving car makers are incorporating more and more extras like face-recognition and augmented reality displays. Bob Stefanski, managing director of eLab Ventures, said that this may be a winning approach for manufactures looking for an edge in the market.

But, Stefanski told John Furrier (@furrier), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile live streaming studio, that one lone company is not going to put together a safe, reliable vehicle from scratch.

“You either integrate or not,” he said while visiting SiliconANGLE’s Palo Alto, CA, studio as part of theCUBE’s Mobile World Congress coverage. “There’s a lot of talk about ‘who wins?’ And ‘the autos can’t move fast enough,'” he said, adding that he does not think legacy auto companies should be counted out just yet.

“They know how to compete,” he said.

Motor City mashes with Silicon Valley

Stefanski, who grew up in Michigan and previously worked for General Motors, said that eLab has the integration theme down.

“We’re the only venture fund with offices and partners located in both places,” he said, meaning both Michigan and Silicon Valley.

Stefanski said that the fund has invested in companies that add to autonomous vehicle production in unexpected ways. One such company is Aperia Technologies Inc., which provides automated tire inflation. He added that stitching diverse technologies together is how the complex and difficult design of an automated vehicle is perfected.

“It’s where you can marry things like tire inflation on commercial fleets with data, with lots of data that we never had before, and then apply Artificial Intelligence to that to learn what’s happening,” Stefanski stated.

AI’s role in the autonomous car’s safety is critical, he said.

“When autonomous takes over, it’s no longer John Furrier driving that car. It’s the AI driving the car,” he concluded, adding that this is why makers must invest heavily in AI.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of the Mobile World Congress 2017 Barcelona.

Photo: SiliconANGLE