Since Google launched its self-driving car in 2019, its toughest challenge has been about the technology. Is it safe enough to deploy at scale?
But this dispute is over. Google's Waymo-branded project has so far seen only minor crashes — about once every 210,000 miles — since it launched the service in 2019 in Phoenix, Arizona.
Last month, Cruze, its GM-backed competitor, received permission to begin commercial operations in its home city of San Francisco. Both groups are valued at more than $30 billion by the most recognizable names in venture capital and technology, according to Saudi Arabia's Al-Eqtisadiah newspaper.
"The Robot Taxi"
In any case, what these two rival companies do not do is take over city after city, as Uber has deployed in 100 cities in the four years since its launch. The cost is so high and the hours of testing so long, it remains unclear whether there really is a working case for the common "robot taxi".
Meanwhile, a new threat has emerged, as suppliers of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) — a bottom-up approach to building autonomous technology — are taking strides. And they already have a great business case, making money selling their technology to automakers, constantly updating their systems and saving lives along the way.
This is the best way to advance self-driving technology, experts say. If they are right, the main danger for robot-taxi optimists is not whether complete subjectivity can succeed, but whether an entirely different approach to the problem arrives first.
Big Trouble
"There is no longer a dispute over whether a robot taxi is real or not, it is real today" "The question is whether another party can offer the same service, the same product, but at half the price. If you have a competitor in this situation, you are in big trouble."
Driverless car groups such as Microsoft-backed Waymo and Cruz and Amazon-owned Zoox and Aurora, which announced plans for a public listing last week, are betting on a solution "almost impossible" without a plan. alternative. They plan to offer complete self-service - albeit confined to certain locations - or none at all. In regulatory jargon, this is called Level 4, where the robot driver requires no input from the passengers. The highest level, the fifth level, allows the vehicle to go anywhere.
The "go big or go home" approach stands in direct opposition to the gradual path taken by ADA players led by suppliers Mobilye, Aptiv, Magna and Bosch, who work with all major automakers. Their advancement means that most new vehicles already include partial autonomy - Level I and II, including cruise control and automatic parking. The most popular system in Tesla cars is the autonomy system in Level 2 cars.
Level 4 groups have long dismissed the notion that this low-cost evolutionary path could be seamlessly transformed into a fully driverless experience.
Big Business Fails
Urmson's logic seemed sound at the time, as advanced driver assistance systems seemed primitive, while robot taxis were several years away from widespread deployment. Waymo prepared to order 82,000 such vehicles in 2018, and Uber expects to have 100,000 vehicles on the road by 2020. Lyft predicts that "most" of its rides will be autonomous by 2021.
But none of this happened. On the contrary, the closer you are to offering a product directly to consumers, the more complex the problem.
At the same time, these efforts have galvanized the traditional automotive industry and developed advanced driver assistance systems for a host of multi-faceted features capable of hands-free highway driving, automatic lane changes and automated valet parking.
However, Level 4 groups continue to dismiss advanced driver assistance systems as a threat. “There really isn't a path from level two to level four — there is a huge gap. It's a completely different development mindset,” said John Kravcik, shortly before he stepped down this year as Waymo chief executive.
The Advantages of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems
One quick look at both industries shows the merits of an approach to advanced driver assistance systems whose success results are unknown.
Today's self-driving car fleets are burning countless amounts of cash. Cruise alone has raised $10 billion and just opened a $5 billion line of credit to build more vehicles.
Waymo was funded by Alphabet for ten years before it raised $3.2 billion in 2020, but it still needs to raise another $2.5 billion last month.
Zox was so close to bankruptcy that it sold itself to Amazon early in the pandemic, while Apple has been working on self-driving since 2014 without showing a prototype of its efforts.
Many big companies have already exposed its woes: Uber actually paid rival Aurora to absorb its 1,200-person team last year, while Lyft sold its Level 5 unit, Ambition, to a division of Toyota. in April.
Meanwhile, the global market for advanced driving assistance systems has become a gold mine. Revenues last year were $25 billion, according to consulting firm Blue Wave, and are expected to nearly triple by 2027. Roland Berger, a consulting firm, predicts that advanced automation features will be common in “nearly every new car sold.” in the developed world" within four years.
Green light
Regulators are reluctant to give the green light to automated driving technology, but they encourage driver-assistance technology.
The US Highway Regulatory Authority estimates that thousands of lives could be saved annually if all cars had partial-automatic features.
The European Union has decided that all new cars must have Lane Keeping Assist and Advanced Emergency Braking technology by 2022.
Apart from Elon Musk, who promised in 2019 that Tesla would get "robot taxis next year", no one really sees that developers of advanced driving assistance systems technology are about to "release" fully driverless driving capabilities in the coming years. the next few.
The business model of selling self-driving technology on highways is well established, growing rapidly, and drivers have shown they are willing to buy.
Drivers must purchase Super Cruise, the self-driving feature developed by General Motors, as part of a package of features that costs $6,150, and when General Motors conducted a survey of Cadillac owners last year, it found that 85 percent wanted it in their next car.
Tesla Systems
Tesla is selling the "Full Self-Driving" package, which requires no additional hardware, for $10,000 - an incredibly lucrative amount for the auto business, as the average profit per car is less than Two thousand dollars.
So, if the developers of advanced driving assistance systems stuck to releasing their systems only for highways, they wouldn't be in trouble. But if Waymo, Cruz, Zoox and Aurora delay their launch, they won't have any.
This is where Tesla leads today. More than a million of its cars are equipped with AutoPilot, which is always in "shadow mode," ready to upload footage to Tesla's servers whenever the human driver makes decisions different from the system's.
In return, Mercedes expects to win regulatory approval in Germany later this year to allow its DrivePilot system to fully control certain situations on high-traffic motorways at speeds of up to 60 kilometers per hour. For this third-level system, the driver will be able to take his eyes off the road completely, and the German car company will be responsible in the event of any accident.
The Horizon is Far
Level 4 technology companies can end this debate by rolling out self-driving services in multiple cities on a large scale. But most experts believe this is still a long way off.
Today, the biggest difference between the two methods is embodied in the technology itself. The cost of advanced driving assistance systems is low and limited, while the fourth level is advanced and high in cost. But in a few years, the biggest difference is likely to be cash flow: ADS players will accumulate it, while Level 4 groups will burn it at greater rates.