The departments of transportation worldwide are facing various challenges despite introducing and incorporating various vehicular features. One of such challenges is to make vehicles autonomous, intelligent, and capable of self-learning to evolve their knowledge repository. In this paper, human cognition is proposed to be implemented in vehicles so that they can perform human-like decisions. Therefore, the process of vehicular route decision is debated cognitively in order to provide route information intelligently. The in-vehicle routes provided by the GPS are not optimal and lack on-demand user requirements. GPS connectivity issues, in certain conditions, make it difficult for vehicles to take real-time decisions. This leads to the idea of self-decision by the vehicle controller. We propose a cognitive framework for vehicles to make self-decisions that use cognitive memory for storing route experiences. The framework strengthens the existing in-vehicle route finding capability and its provision in a more realistic manner. The user is provided with all available route-related information that is required for the journey. In addition, the route episodes are learned, stored, and accessed inside the cognitive memory for an optimal route provision. The vehicle learns about the routes and matures with route-experience by itself with the passage of time. In simulations, fuzzy modeling is used to validate the impact of cognitive parameters over static/conventional parameters. Moreover, artificial neural networks are used to minimize the error rate in learning to achieve cognitive route decisions. The proposed in-vehicle cognitive framework outperforms the existing route provision system that is inadequate and provokes the user's anxieties during driving. Besides, the proposed scheme gradually gets mature in delivering optimal as well as latest route-related information. INDEX TERMS VANET, cognition, fuzzy model, artificial neural network, vehicle route.