How Samsung Aims to Catch Up in Car Tech

As Samsung Electronics ramps up a belated move into the self-driving car market, initially it is taking aim at the driver assistance technology arena dominated by Intel’s Mobileye—products like collision avoidance that are already in high-end cars, said Young Sohn, Samsung’s chief strategy officer, in an exclusive interview.

Samsung hopes to exploit frustration among carmakers over Mobileye’s control of data generated by its cameras in their vehicles. “Do you want to give up your [car] data?” Mr. Sohn said. One prominent automaker executive echoed that sentiment, telling The Information that “many OEM’s [carmakers] currently need [Mobileye] as there seems to be no equivalent solution and nobody loves the idea to become dependent on their solutions and technologies.”