Inside CVC by u-path
Welcome to Inside CVC —Inside CVC by U-Path is the podcast where corporate venture capital meets strategy, leadership, and systemic change. Hosted by Philipp Willigmann and Steve Schmith, the show brings senior voices from across corporate venture, startups, investment, academia, and policy to the table.
Each episode goes beyond buzzwords to explore how capital, technology, and leadership shape the future of business and society. From AI and robotics to geopolitics, board governance, and inclusive innovation, Inside CVC is designed for executives and policymakers who want to understand not just what’s happening — but what to do about it.
Inside CVC by u-path
Inside CVC: Why Europe Fell Behind in Autonomy. And How It Can Catch Up with Christian Schumacher
Europe once led the world in autonomous driving. Massive public investment. Breakthrough demonstrations. Real vehicles on real highways long before autonomy was mainstream.
So what happened?
In this episode of Inside CVC, we sit down with Christian to unpack the rise, stall, and potential resurgence of autonomy in Europe. Drawing from decades of experience across research labs, OEMs, and boardrooms, Christian explains why Europe’s challenge isn’t technology. It’s culture, regulation, and execution.
You’ll hear how early European leadership gave way to faster deployment in the U.S., why China’s “progress over perfection” mindset changed the global pace of innovation, and how fragmented regulation slowed momentum across the EU. We also explore the growing gap between hardware-centric automotive cultures and agile software development, and why autonomy is no longer about cars, but autonomous systems across industries.
This conversation goes beyond autonomy. It’s about trust, talent, and the courage to deploy innovation before perfection.
In this episode, you’ll hear:
- Why Europe led early in autonomy and why it lost momentum
- How U.S. and Chinese regulatory models accelerated deployment
- The cultural clash between automotive hardware and agile software teams
- Why autonomy is evolving into broader autonomous systems
- What Europe needs to rebuild trust, talent, and speed
Catch up on all episodes of Inside CVC at www.u-path.com/podcast.
Welcome to Inside CVC, the podcast that brings together leaders in innovation and capital investment to explore the trends shaping the business of corporate venture capital. I'm your host, Steve Schmidt, and together with Philip Willardman, we're speaking to corporate investors, entrepreneurs, and ecosystem builders driving the future of innovation. InsideCVC is brought to you by UPath Advisors, helping corporations and startups unlock sustainable growth through strategic partnerships. To learn more, visit upath.com. That's the letter U, Path.com. And to catch up on all of our episodes, search InsideCVC on your favorite podcast platform or visit uPath.com forward slash podcast. In 2025, Autonomy and Robotics returned to the center of the innovation agenda. From Elon Musk's compensation package tied directly to scaling autonomy and robotics to high-profile announcements and urban air mobility to renewed investments across advanced connected vehicle technology. The pace is picking up again. 2026 kicks off with CES in Las Vegas, where these themes will be on full display, and I'll be moderating a panel on investing in vehicle technology. These renewed investments and current business cycle make today's conversation especially timely. We're joined by Christian Schumacher, co-founder and managing director of Schwarzenberger Tech USA. With nearly 30 years of experience across ADAS, autonomous driving, and software-defined vehicles in Europe and the US, Christian brings a rare global perspective. In this conversation, we unpack why Europe once led an autonomy, why it fell behind, and what it'll take to catch up. We also explore how China's speed first approach is reshaping global competition, how regulation impacts deployment, and why execution and trust now matter as much as the technology itself. Here's our conversation with Christian Schumacher. You've seen autonomy from inside the labs, from the boardrooms. What did those early years in Europe feel like in this space?
Christian:I think in the early years, uh, and we're talking about the mid to late 80s, uh, I think Europe was leading these activities. Yeah, there were groundbreaking activities uh from Mr. Dickmann's uh at the university in Munich, the military Bundeswehr University. And there were a lot of public or government uh spending uh with the Prometheus uh project. Um so um just to give you some numbers, from 87 to 95, the Orica Prometus project, I think, was spending close to 800 million euros. Uh, and this was resulting in amazing performance demonstrations. Um 1994, for example, there was a Mercedes driving in the Paris area around, giving their highway demo in autonomous uh vehicle driving, and I think they reached even a thousand kilometers, so that was pretty impressive for this time. In 1995, there was this famous uh ride from Munich to Copenhagen. Uh was first fully autonomous highways drive with even passing vehicles, multi-lane highways. Um the system was recognizing different kinds of cars, and we have to think about it, it was without lighter systems. This was strictly based on stereo vision at the time. So that that was really impressive. So you had the mood in Germany, you had the technology, you had the investment, the money, basically, everything was going well. There were some activities we have to be fair enough in the US as well. Uh, Karten-Gemann University had uh their no hands across America drive, but that was by far not as high from a technology level as it was in Europe, the Munich drive to Copenhagen. So basically, uh this I think that was by the way, the time when I was started working, and that's where I got hooked up the first time to automate driving. It was a huge hype in Europe. And at this time, uh, Europe was definitely leading. Uh nobody at this time was talking about the US, uh nobody was even talking about China. So that was amazing.
Philipp:Christian, we have spoken before about this topic. Um, obviously, um deeply uh interested in autonomous uh driving. And uh one of the topics we discussed was why Europe you know fail behind and uh not only in autonomy, but of course in many, many other topics as well. Most of the time when we talk about you know Europe, many people say it's mostly investment in technology, and technology is really the driver why there is change. Is that true in this case? Or is also culture really a big difference why some really breakthrough technologies like autonomous driving were more successful, at least at the moment, in the United States?
Christian:I think it's both, to be honest. I think there's strong government push uh combined with obviously financial ability, uh, a lot of uh money from the private sector, and openness, that's what you mean with culture, to quickly adjust things uh on the legislation in the same way as on the technology, and that paved at the end the the way. Uh, I would phrase it more like uh move fast, state by state, city by city. Um, if you look at what Waymo, what Aurora are doing in their different kinds of technologies. Uh one is obviously more in the in the robocab area, the other one is in transportation of goods. Uh, but they they were very quick developing the systems and deploy them on the public roads. Uh Waymo is uh obviously working with Phoenix, San Francisco versus Los Angeles. Aurora is looking at Texas, Arizona, and have actively testing, or are now testing actively in California and Colorado. So I think again, as I said, they move fast and they focus. They focus on states, they focus on cities. So it's kind of a combination of uh private industry and government and cities that are working together. What we when we talk about a little later, don't currently see in Europe.
Philipp:Is there like an obsession with standards and safety uh in Europe, which uh is at a point where we essentially are um stopping some of the innovation?
Christian:No, I just can emphasize on this one um to say it uh very strong. They are all good things in Europe. Uh, if you're looking at ISO 26262, SOTIF, uh the AI Act, uh, UNEC, they are all positive and they usually generate a lot of trust. The only problem is um they were implemented in a way that they slowed down the development of this kind of systems. And and this is something we we have to fix and we can fix. But it's by basically the explanation that Sarah was saying why by currently Europe is definitely behind. The ingredients are all good. The mixture maybe is not perfect at this point.
Steve:I think when you comes to regulation around these areas, it's all starts from a good place. Safety, passenger safety can be no sort of error in this technology and scaling this technology. Still, then you look to China where they are doing things in in sort of of areas of standardization, et cetera. But one of the things that they seem to be doing is uh progress over perfection. They seem to be taking less risk in some of these things, and what that is ultimately turning into is faster scaling at a lower cost, et cetera. So I'm curious when we talk about regulation and these things in Europe and the US and the things around scaling safely and and and all those things, and you look at what China's approach is. I'm just curious, is there any way to dial down? Should there be any sort of dialing down on the perfection of these technologies in lieu of scaling?
Christian:I I think they will, because at the end of the day, we're talking always about the trust factor. And I think uh the the public uh sees this very similar. It doesn't matter if you're in Asia, US, or Europe. So I'm pretty sure they will adjust the regulations. Nevertheless, if you're looking at Asia in general, uh policies, regulations are usually set up as an enabler. They should accelerate the technology. Yeah, they should make it faster. That's why you have this uh fast-growing uh cities like Shenzhen with all the uh automated mobility in there. So basically they create regulations, not uh necessarily to slow down, not saying that Europe tries to do that to slow down, but they do it more as an accelerator and enabler to make it everything similar, everything the same, so that companies can do it very fast. Maybe they overshoot a little bit with some of the stuff, and maybe, yes, from a development perspective, um you could say they are much faster because the regulations are maybe not as strict, but I'm very confident that somewhere in the future they will adjust this because, as we said, um they they will hear to the public. They have to have the trust of the public, especially when they want to get their products out of China. And the Chinese industry has a lot of interest to get the products into the US market, into European market.
Steve:That seems absolutely complex when I hear what you're describing and I look at China as one market governed by one government. The European Union, multiple jurisdictions, multiple stakeholders, and similar to the United States, or in our federal government, our federal laws versus uh those things at the state level. How do these different these different sort of regions impact all of this scaling, all of this collaboration, partnership, etc.?
Christian:It does, because uh you create fragmentation. It's very simple. And in China, you have one country steered by basically one driver, if you want to say it this way. If you look at Europe or US, you have several drivers. Nevertheless, interesting enough, in the US, the several drivers work very well. If you think about Europe, um, you have obviously different countries, and in the countries itself, you have the states like Bavaria, for example. So that means you have a much higher complexity, makes it much more difficult. And in this case, you definitely have an advantage if something is centralized steered in this case, makes it much easier to roll it out. We're back to the regulation and processes, than if you have fragmented worlds. Nevertheless, interesting enough, as I've mentioned, in the US it worked very well. They were stimulating each other, they were competing with each other and promoting the technology.
Philipp:One follow-up on China. I recently heard um from a conversation um with a couple of delegations who went from Europe to Asia that some of the state officials there are actually a bit concerned that some of the developments are going too fast and that they are not currently having the plans in place. Um, what happens if, for example, autonomous uh driving autonomous shuttles are really taking off? What's happening with the drivers? They have no answers to that. Is that something you have heard as well?
Christian:So here's similar, to be honest, out of China. They're dialing back basically. They noticed that in certain areas they were too fast. Certain technologies were kind of growing too fast and a little bit out of control. Um they emphasize much more on traffic safety as an example. Um, so uh there are definitely um uh let's say regulations that will be added makes it more tough for them to develop the systems. Um I don't think they will lead uh uh loss or lose speed in develop in general, but they might lose a little bit of speed of deployment on public roads. So I hear very, very similar things because as I said, they pay attention to what they hear from the inside, but from the outside as well. There are a lot of critical voices from outside China, and they want, as I said, sell their products outside of China as well. So they have to adjust. So I got similar feedback, yes.
Philipp:Let's let's go back to Europe. What do you think do we need to do to rebuild trust so that we you know we can drive more experiments, we can drive autonomy for, but also other major technologies?
Christian:To get trust, you have to see the technology. So I think we need more deployments, we have to get more cities engaged. You have certain product or programs in Hamburg, for example, with people movers, but you need more than this. You need more uh public awareness of this technology. On the other side, you need uh a certain balance and liability. That's one of the concerns in Europe, that if something happens, who who has uh to do the insurance, whether this is the insurance company, the OEM, as it's the final person that is in this kind of uh autonomous vehicle. So um these things have to be clarified and have to be pushed um uh to get to the next level. Yeah. And I think it's possible. I I think we have the capabilities of doing this um um to get the trust back into this technology. As I said, the most important part is deployment, that people can touch it, can feel it, get confidence in it. We have all the safety guards, we have all the the guidance that you can have from a regulation perspective and from a process perspective. So if you're on top of this, we just have to make sure that's not slowing us down. You have to get these things up on the road in a safe manner, show it to the public. And I think then the trust will come, there's no question about it.
Steve:Well, I think what you're talking about ultimately it also results that incumbent uh automakers and incumbent suppliers, right? Where a lot of this started in Europe as we started this conversation, how that is scaled in the US, part of this, I believe, also results in the culture of these companies transforming, so much so that they're separating perhaps an innovation, a software piece of their vehicle that can be iterated quicker and quicker and quicker from the actual hardware side of the of the vehicle. And so I'm curious if you've got sort of a point of view for our automotive OEMs and suppliers that could be listening to this that are thinking about innovating faster. How do you separate, how do you transform that culture in some of these companies that are, you know, hundreds of years old?
Christian:You have to think about it, you have to bring uh two totally completely different kinds of organizations, hardware-focused organizations, very much uh focusing on the standards for the hardware. And then you have software development that is fragmented in two areas. One is the traditional automotive software development that was more on the slower side, following all the regulations that are hardware driven. And on the other side, you have the agile world. Yeah, that means you have the world where software is developed very, very fast, going in one direction. If you notice the direction is wrong, you you turn around. That is a completely different world. And that's where most of the companies are struggling. If you're looking at the big OEMs, I don't want to mention any anyone's here, but you're well aware of them. And the same on the Tier 1 side, they are struggling to integrate these two worlds. They're trying hard, they're trying even to exchange certain executives and bringing in people with this agile thought in the top executive level, and still they're struggling. So it's a cultural point. It's not necessarily technology point, it's a cultural point to bring that together. And some companies do better, some unfortunately worse.
Steve:Well, I think that's also interesting in a in a business cycle now where your company executives and companies are measured on quarterly performance, right? What we're talking about here are not things that scale on a quarterly basis, right? And I so I think that's that's a complexity to all of this that says, yeah, this is the right way to approach all this, but but then the expectation from from investors is how is that driving growth? How is that driving profitability today? And that to your point, I think we're seeing uh story after story where those are where the ROI for those investments just continues to get pushed out and pushed out.
Christian:It's perfect. Uh just to add on this, that's exactly the problem you have. You're facing about a year maximum in automotive industry. If you're looking at the big software companies, everybody's looking further around. They're adding to their features, they're adding on top of features, they're developing the next level of uh of their telephone, for example. Yeah, and and in a car world, you always have a new car, a new car. You're not adding, adding, adding. Uh that means you're thinking long-term in the other industries. And that's something that's very, very difficult because executives in the automotive are measured basely on their yearly uh performance. And this is kind of slowing down the introduction of software.
Philipp:Yeah, what what is the now the typical development cycle of a new vehicle? I think at some point it was like 10 years that people were looking out when the next vehicle is coming. So, what is the cycle right now when you create a new we're see this S-class? How many years in advance are you starting?
Christian:Um it's difficult to say, but I would I would assume at this point it's maybe six years uh in the time frame. Nevertheless, if you're looking at other countries, specifically China and so on, I think it's really more in the two to three year timeframe. You see, there's still a huge difference if you're looking at this planning of new new products coming out. And I think some of the US manufacturers are thinking in the same direction currently. It's changing.
Philipp:Which I mean, which brings us to the question: what is the next wave, not only on autonomy, but then generally when it comes to automotive? Because I think the question is really are we are we talking about cars at that point anymore? Or are we actually kind of really talking about autonomous mobility systems and ecosystems? How do you see that evolving? That you know, especially also European manufacturers are being able to think more about ecosystems uh versus just building metal on wheels.
Christian:Yeah, so I think it's switching, as you said, it's not autonomous driving anymore. It goes to autonomous systems. Um, it's beyond the pure vehicle technology. Um it began with the technology at the car because it was the most uh visible one. We have now systems that are using the the same ingredients: the AI, the sensors, the data processing, everything else that we used at the beginning in automated driving. What we used at the time, obviously, uh in big computers. Now it's it's on a very small-scale chip available. And the same technologies can be used everywhere, all the kind of different areas, health industry, uh, industries in general, um, defense. So again, at in the future, we are talking not about autonomous driving anymore, we're talking about autonomous systems that are capable to be deployed everywhere where we need them.
Philipp:So if if we would give you one billion euros to restart Europe's autonomy story, where would you put it? Like technology, infrastructure, people.
Christian:At the end of the day, it's all about the people. Yeah, we have the technology. Uh, we we have to certainly view the infrastructure and we can catch up there very, very fast. It's all about the people because people you cannot build up uh in a year or so. That takes time. Yeah, you need to get the talent staying in Europe. You have to help them to see a sense to stay in Europe and not go to the US or go to China. Uh, that's the most important part. People is the one that gives us back the passion to win.
Steve:Such an important topic, such an interesting topic. One final question to close us out. Um, finish this line. Europe didn't lose autonomy, it lost.
Christian:I think personally, uh, and we we reiterated it several times, it lost a little bit of the passion to win, the courage to go forward, to use the technology, do the next step, yeah, um, to invest into it, to trust it. Uh, to sometimes trust even if you're not 100% convinced. I think that's what uh you have lost. But the ingredients are there. That's why I'm very, very positive that we can catch up again. And uh technically, again, I think we are leading certain areas. We mentioned it before. That means at the end of the day, that's all. We said it about the people, about the courage to do it, to implement it, to get it out of the road, and obviously to make it commercially viable. So that's all about it.
Steve:That's it for this episode of Inside CVC, the last interview for 2025. If you've not caught up on all of our episodes, you can always find them on your favorite podcast platform or online at uPath.com forward slash podcast. As always, thanks for listening. We'll see you in 2026 on Inside C V CHEHEH.
