Autonomous Vehicle Wars

Let the grown-up robot wars begin! Contenders ready?

I think we see the merging of several worlds, the tech industry, the internet and the automotive industry.

Dieter Zetsche

Start of a Revolution

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…

The self-driving car was talked about as a futuristic piece of tech that was decades away, in the same way, we think about flying cars today. Thanks to innovators, disruptors, and game-changers – an autonomous future is now an inevitability. There is no doubt autonomous vehicles will have an impact on how people and goods will move more efficiently in the future. But the magnitude of that impact – and how quickly this technology can benefit society – will largely depend on businesses, governments and public working together.

Service providers, incumbent vehicle manufacturers, and respective supply chains feeling the competitive pressure are accelerating the advent of autonomous tech. The rush to develop self-driving cars is fueling GM’s $1 billion acquisition of Cruise, Uber buying Otto for $680 million, Ford’s $1 billion Argo AI project, and Intel acquiring Mobileye for a massive $15.3 billion. Engineers working on self-driving tech can easily request half a million dollars a year in the Bay Area. Autonomous is the space to be at in 2018. Relevant skills and tech, like Computer Vision, AI, Robotics, are in very high-demand, as well as non-technical roles in operations, marketing, recruiting, and sales – are all needed as part of the well-oiled machine to make autonomous vehicles a reality.

Hype Cycle

To track the evolution of any major technology, the “hype cycle” methodology is a handy guide. You start with an “innovation trigger,” the breakthrough, and soon hit the “peak of inflated expectations,” when the money flows and headlines blare. And then there’s the trough of disillusionment when things start failing, falling short of expectations, and hoovering up less money than before. This is where the practical challenges and hard realities separate the vaporware from the world-changers. Autonomous, it seems, is entering the trough. Welcome to the hard part!

Autonomous technology is where computing was in the 60s. The technology is just coming into existence and beginning to display signs of future potential. It’s not modular, and it is yet to be determined how the different components will fit together into major systems. Turns out building autonomous vehicles takes more than strapping sensors and software onto a set of wheels. Developing a system that can be manufactured and deployed at scale with cost-effective, maintainable hardware is challenging. The hurdles facing the respective supply chain are enormous, and without this supply chain and infrastructures, there is no future for autonomous vehicles.

Supply Chains

In the past five years, autonomous vehicles went from “maybe possible” to “definitely possible” to “inevitable” to “how did anyone ever think this wasn’t inevitable?”. With much of the technology being slowly introduced by ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems) and respective automotive supply chains. Every significant vehicle manufacturer is pursuing the tech, eager to rebrand and rebuild itself as a “mobility provider” before the idea of car ownership goes kaput.

Waymo, the company that emerged from Google’s self-driving car project, has been at it the longest, but its monopoly has eroded of late. Ride-hailing companies like Lyft and Uber are hustling to dismiss the profit-gobbling human drivers who now shuttle their users about. Tech giants like Intel, IBM, and Apple are looking to carve off their slice of the pie as well. Countless hungry startups have materialized to fill niches in a burgeoning ecosystem, focusing on laser sensors, compressing mapping data, and setting up service centers to maintain the vehicles.

Gold Rush

This 21st-century gold rush is motivated by the intertwined forces of opportunity and survival instinct. By one account, autonomous tech will add $7 trillion to the global economy and save hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few decades. Simultaneously, it will devastate the automotive industry and associated vertical markets. Some will prosper. Most will benefit. Many will be left behind.

The real hard job now is to endlessly improve the software – powered by machine learning – used by computers to correctly interpret the data from all the sensors. The secret is to move from idea to proof-of-concept, to a market-viable-product – playing the agile playbook in super quick record timings. That’s why Ford invested a billion dollars into artificial intelligence outfit Argo AI, why General Motors bought a startup called Cruise, why Waymo has driven four million autonomous miles on public roads. Safe driving requires more than just knowing that a person is over there; you also have to know that said person is riding a bicycle, how they’re likely to act, and how to respond. That’s hard for a robot, but these budding Skynet slaves are getting better, fast!

Mobility as a Service

The truth is, it’s hard to imagine what society will do once vehicles can move about on their own, and once these things are so efficient that the cost of transportation falls to something approaching zero. It’s easy to conjure up a dystopia, a world where robocars encourage sprawl, everyone lives 100 miles from their job and sends their self-driving servants to do their errands and clog our streets. The optimists imagine a new kind of utopian city, where this technology not only eliminates crashes but integrates with existing public transport and remains affordable for all users. Like the internet, these vehicles will reflect some of our worse impulses but also channel our best.

This is what’s now called Mobility as a Service, or MaaS, and along with robotic delivery commercial vehicles, it’s the first big step for AI-enabled driving technology. Even Toyota has made it crystal clear that it intends to enter the fray with a highly flexible, purpose-built autonomous vehicle platform that can ferry urban commuters, deliver pizzas or Amazon purchases. Of all the global vehicle manufacturers, Toyota is among the first to announce plans to supply a base vehicle for other companies’ MaaS and delivery operations.

Market Players

With all that said we leave you with a non-extensive list of the most exciting major game-changers whose innovations and deals are revolutionizing autonomous technologies and services worldwide.

Major Automotive Manufacturers/Brands:

• Audi
• BMW
• Ford
• GM / Cruise Automation
• Honda
• Hyundai
• Mercedes-Benz
• Porsche
• PSA
• Renault-Nissan
• Tesla
• Toyota
• Volvo
• …

Major Automotive Suppliers:

• Bosch
• Delphi
• Magna
• Magneti Marelli
• Osram
• ZF
• …

Major Non-Automotive:

• Comma.ai / George Hotz
• Delphi / nuTonomy
• Google / Waymo
• Luminar / Austin Russel
• Lyft
• Uber
• …

Major Suppliers:

• Apple
• Baidu
• IBM
• Intel
• Mobileye
• Nvidia
• Qualcomm
• Samsung
• Velodyne
• …

Major Transactions:

• Delphi / nuTonomy – $450 Million – M & A – (24th October 2017)
• LeddarTech – $101 Million – Series C – (7th September 2017)
• Innoviz – $65 Million – Series B – (7th September 2017)
• FiveAI – $35 Million – Series A – (5th September 2017)
• Oryx Vision – $50 Million – Series B – (8th August 2017)
• Intel / Mobileye – $15 Billion – M & A – (8th August 2017)
• Momenta.ai – $46 Million – Series B – (25th July 2017)
• Nauto – $159 Million – Series B – (19th July 2017)
• Swift Navigation – $34 Million – Series B ( 28th June 2017)
• Luminar – $36 Million – Seed – (14th April 2017)
• Autotalks – $30 Million – Series D – (22th March 2017)
• Ford / Argo AI – $1 Billion – Major Investment – (18th February 2017)
• Uber / Otto – $680 Million – M & A – (18th August 2016)
• GM / Cruise Automation – $1 Billion – M & A – (11th March 2016)
• Delphi / Ottomatika – $16 Million – M & A – (4th August 2015)
• …

Major Investors:

• AutoTech Ventures
• BMW i Ventures
• Fontinalis Partners
• GM Ventures
• Jaguar InMotion Ventures
• Maniv Mobility
• Samsung Automotive Fund
• Softbank Vision Fund
• Toyota AI Ventures
• …

Major Innovative Startups:

• AImotive
• Argo AI
• Aurora Labs
• AutoX
• Brain Corp
• BRAIQ
• CARMERA
• Cognata
• DeepMap
• DeepScale
• Drive.ai
• Embark
• GhostWave
• Local Motors
• Lucid Motors
• LvI5
• Marble
• May Mobility
• Metawave
• Mighty AI
• Nauto
• Navya
• Neteera
• Nuro
• NuTonomy
• Oryx Vision
• Otto
• Ouster
• Pony.ai
• Ridecell
• SEEVA Technologies
• Starsky Robotics
• Torc Robotics
• Voyage
• Zoox
• …

This post was originally published here.