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 In a call to discuss second-quarter results, Zetsche was asked
whether he was concerned about hacker attacks on Mercedes-Benz cars.
"You can see from reading the papers that we are trying to acquire a
platform together with our German competitors, to gain control over
the platform which enables autonomous driving, for exactly these
reasons," Zetsche said.
"We have the goal of designing security into the software."
Zetsche said the carmakers would seek to make the software platform,
available to third-party competitors.
A bidding consortium consisiting of BMW, Volkswagen's Audi and
Mercedes is close to a deal to buy Nokia's HERE for between 2.5
billion and 3 billion euros ($2.74 billion to $3.29 billion),
sources have told Reuters.
But a final agreement hinges on the question of who owns the patents
for the technology that helps self-driving cars talk to mobile
networks, two sources familiar with the deal told Reuters on
Tuesday.
Earlier this week, a pair of veteran cybersecurity researchers
showed they could use the Internet to turn off a car's engine as it
drives, escalating the stakes in the debate about the safety of
connected cars and trucks.
High-definition digital maps help connected and self-driving cars
can perform intelligent functions such as recalculating a route if
data about a traffic jam or an accident is transmitted to update the
car's intelligent mapping system.
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Self-driving cars use data gathered from vehicle radar and laser
sensors and cross-reference this with information embedded in
digital high-definition maps such as the location of traffic lights,
lane markings or traffic jams up ahead.
"As vehicles become more connected, more autonomous and less
reliant on human-operated mechanical functions, the question of
security will become more important and more frequent," Morgan
Stanley analysts wrote in a note on Thursday.
"We see the value of software and software content in the average
car rising to around 60 percent over the next 15 years from less
than 10 percent today."
(Reporting by Ilona Wissenbach and Edward Taylor; Editing by
Georgina Prodhan)
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