Self-driving cars are a political problem, not a technical problem. A functioning government would put everything from automation-friendly signaling standards to battery-swapping facilities into place.
We humans used to do that sort of thing, but not anymore, so... bring on the AI. It won't work as well as it might otherwise be able to, but it'll probably kill fewer humans on the road at the end of the day. A low bar to clear.
Self-driving car companies dont want a unfiied signalling platform or other "open for all" infrastructure updates. They want to own self-driving, to lock you into a subscription on their platform.
Literally the only open source self driving platform, from trillion to billion to million dollar companies is comma.ai, founded by Geohot. Thats it. Its actually very good, and I bet they would welcome these upgrades, but that would be a consortium of one underdog pushing for them.
Corporations generally follow a narrow somewhat predictable pattern towards some local maxima of their own value extraction. Since world is not zero sum, it produces value for others too.
Where politics (should) enter the picture is where we somehow can see a more global maxima (for all citizens) and try to drive towards it through some political, hopefully democratic means. (Laws, standards, education, investment, infra etc)
We humans used to do that sort of thing, but not anymore, so... bring on the AI. It won't work as well as it might otherwise be able to, but it'll probably kill fewer humans on the road at the end of the day. A low bar to clear.