> motivated engineers (culture!) in house able to refactor the vehicle software to support a new silicon configuration
I feel like this is overstated. I say this as someone who's done a fair whack porting work, compiling for a new platform isn't really that technically challenging - at least not at the talent you'd expect in the embedded space. Typically you'd have abstractions around maths, GPU compute, UI, rendering, etc. and a retargetable RTOS/kernel. That said, it's quite likely other auto-makers shot themselves in the foot by not having these abstractions.
I feel like this is overstated. I say this as someone who's done a fair whack porting work, compiling for a new platform isn't really that technically challenging - at least not at the talent you'd expect in the embedded space. Typically you'd have abstractions around maths, GPU compute, UI, rendering, etc. and a retargetable RTOS/kernel. That said, it's quite likely other auto-makers shot themselves in the foot by not having these abstractions.