270: The Algorithm Is the Road
Avoiding Another Avro Arrow
This is the second part of a series on the future of the Canadian auto industry…
Canada keeps misreading moments like the one we now find ourselves in, where threats loom large yet opportunities abound. When pressure arrives from Washington, the reflex is to defend what exists instead of asking what could be different.
That reflex is exactly how we lost the Avro Arrow, not because we lacked talent or ambition, but because we failed to turn a technological breakthrough into a durable ecosystem. Autonomy presents the same fork in the road, with one crucial difference: this time, the system can be participatory by design.
The algorithm is the road
Autonomy is not a feature you bolt onto a car. It is a coordination layer that governs vehicles, infrastructure, software updates, diagnostics, liability, and learning. Once vehicles become software-defined, safety and prosperity come from system coherence, not individual brilliance.
This system coherence largely comes in the form of communication. Fundamentally that is what the Internet as a system enables, and autonomy is an affordance that depends upon successful communication.
Presently we’ve relied upon basic communication within transportation systems. Signal lights, paint on the road, or even hand gestures 🖕. Increasingly many of us are also now using navigation apps that include real-time traffic or weather data. Yet these are all tiny fragments of a much larger information ecosystem that exists and is emerging.
In particular, traffic, like the Internet, is a system where centralized or top down control is near impossible. Instead we can recognize a system that will become more complex and yet also more powerful with increased information.
That insight changes everything about industrial strategy. Instead of trying to crown a national champion, Canada can build an open mobility platform, an autonomous vehicle (AV) commons, where many firms, builders, and communities participate.
Control comes not from command, but from coordination via the platform. The shared system itself, the road as it were, is what helps enable efficiency and inclusivity.
The commons as an on-ramp for entrepreneurs
The most underappreciated advantage of an AV commons is that it radically lowers the barrier to entry.
If the chassis interfaces, drive-by-wire standards, sensor abstractions, and core autonomy stack are open and certified, then new Canadian companies don’t need to reinvent the car. They can specialize.
This is already happening at the margins. Edison Motors is a useful signal because it shows how much appetite exists for domestic, mission-driven vehicle manufacturing once the barriers come down. Edison’s success points to a latent ecosystem: builders, suppliers, machinists, and customers who want vehicles that are repairable, purpose-built, and locally accountable.
The commons formalizes that instinct.
Entrepreneurs can enter at multiple layers:
Vehicle assembly and specialty platforms
Autonomy integration and fleet software
Sensors, retrofit kits, diagnostics, and maintenance tooling
Mapping, routing, and domain-specific autonomy (agriculture, snow, industrial sites)
Instead of a single bet, you get a portfolio of bets, all interoperable.
This only works if the regulations that govern that ecosystem are coherent and clear. Unfortunately this is a problem Edison Motors has encountered as their technology outpaced existing regulations.
Entrepreneurial ecosystems die when regulation is either absent or arbitrary. The solution here is not deregulation, it is clarity and legibility.
A national autonomous certification framework could address this challenge and offer clarity to market participants by:
Certifying systems, not companies
Be scoped to operational domains (speed, geography, conditions)
Attach liability to certified operators and stacks, not fictional “drivers”
Require transparent telemetry and incident reporting
This does two things at once. It gives insurers, regulators, and fleet buyers confidence, while giving startups a clear target to build toward. You know what “good” looks like, and you know when you’ve reached it.
The current problem is that regulators and market actors are at odds, rather than existing within a shared ecosystem where communication and iteration is shared and transparent. We have an adversarial system rather than a co-operative system, in part because we create roadblocks to participation rather than embracing it.
Regulation is seen as an obstacle, when instead it should be the enabler, an on-ramp to prosperity.
Fleets first, but not fleets only
Fleets remain the fastest way to scale safely. They concentrate learning, standardize maintenance, and create early demand. But excluding end consumers would be a strategic mistake.
Public excitement matters. Cultural legitimacy matters. And innovation often comes from the edges.
That’s where a DIY and hacker pathway becomes a strength rather than a risk.
Open-source autonomy projects already exist, most notably comma.ai and its widely used openpilot stack. Instead of treating this culture as a threat, the commons should absorb it:
Sandbox environments where enthusiasts can test and contribute within defined safety constraints
Clear separation between experimental and certified modes
Secure update channels that allow community contribution without compromising system integrity
Public reference designs that invite learning, tinkering, and improvement
This is how the internet stayed resilient: openness paired with layered security, not prohibition.
A participatory system builds literacy. Literacy builds trust. Trust builds political durability.
The auto industry thrives off of after market and garage based innovation and adaptation. Recent trends have seen independent mechanics and car owners locked out of repairing or modifying their vehicle, whereas the health of the industry and ecosystem requires the opposite.
We don’t need to worry about the right to repair if we’ve already secured the right to build and modify.
The logic of the Internet is that of a network of networks where connection and interoperability are inherent. Why would we not apply this exact same logic to our transportation systems?
Resilience without isolation
A U.S. backlash or USMCA challenge is predictable. The defense is architectural.
If the commons is framed as public safety and infrastructure, procurement authority is strong. If foreign manufacturers can participate by meeting open standards, discrimination claims weaken. If Canada aligns its standards with other jurisdictions, isolation becomes impossible.
Crucially, ownership shifts from factories to protocols. Factories can move. Protocols are harder to dislodge.
Canada’s real enemy is not Washington or Beijing. It is our habit of treating policy as a domain of experts that serve at the whim of politicians. Instead we should treat policy for what it is, a public good that enables public benefit.
The current reconfiguration of our relationship with the US offers us an opportunity to focus on what we share in common, which is our ability to move around or country.
The organizations who already already operate at system scale: provinces, major cities, public fleet operators, Indigenous governments, utilities, and transit authorities ostensibly plan for decades. Let’s embrace that view by reconciling our transportation systems and our communication systems.
Avoiding another Avro Arrow
The Arrow wasn’t cancelled because it was too ambitious. It was cancelled because it was alone.
Autonomy will fail the same way if we chase a flagship instead of building a commons. But if we recognize that the algorithm is the road, and that roads work best when they are public, shared, and continuously maintained, then Canada has a rare chance to get this right.
Not by outspending others.
Not by copying Silicon Valley.
But by doing what we quietly do best when we remember how: building infrastructure that lets many people move, safely and prosperously, in the same direction.
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser