What does blink mean? Does your chips work when it is -70c - cars are used in arctic environments and so automakers have special tests to ensure they work in cold temperatures most of us will never see. Do you chips work when it is +65c - the inside of a parked car will get that hot, and the car is expected to work. How long will you keep the new chips in production - the longer the better we need to provide spare parts for everything for at least 10 years, so if you go out of production we need to fill a warehouse with the final production run just in case the things start mass failing in a few years.

I think the auto industry is looking to see if they can bypass the whole above mess with their own fabs. They don't need fancy processes, they need something reliable that they can depend on for years. The cost to a fab though means they need to worry about anti-trust as they can't go alone.