But isn't a lot of modern automotive all about ai? Stuff like image recognition on camera's and sensors, error prediction, data-aggregation and, in future, self-driving?

You're not going to run that AI on chips made in fab which will be already outdated by 15+ years when it's opened.

Not really.

Most tasks in a car do not run on high speed cutting edge chips.

A few random examples:

- adjusting your side mirrors - the control of the AC cooling unit and speed of the fans - electronically adjustable seats - parking sensors (the beeping kind) - wiper controls - engine controls (ice or BV) - inverter (BV)

All of those require electronics most require a microcontroller but not the latest 3nm Snapdragon.

Most of the stuff in a car could run on a 6502. The rest will run on something akin to the NXP i.MX8. Not at all cutting edge, but more than sufficient.

It is more than fast enough to process input from sensors and it has hardware support for video.

eh, modern ECUs, accident compute, etc are doing timing and tuning calculations in real time such that you need something a little more adequate. A 40mhz PowerPC CPU with an FPU, for example.

Aside from mandatory ADAS, most cars can definitely get away with "90s tech" but probably not "80s tech"

The 6502 in my argument was meant for something like controlling seats or mirrors.

The ECU obviously needs more compute power. That said 6502 was an over exaggeration.

fwiw modern car buses have signing and authentication - using a shared bus significantly lowers car weight and increases reliability, but also introduces security challenges. signing operations are too expensive for a 6502