Why does it matter who gets there first? To make a driverless business work takes a big fleet to establish service in major markets, as well as a brand name that becomes as synonymous with getting a ride as Uber is today. Observers expect the field to narrow.
For now, investors are throwing money at possible winners
“There won’t be a ton of companies doing this,” Collie said. “There will be a select few. Being there first establishes consumer trust. Brand value matters.”
For now, investors are throwing money at possible winners. Tesla’s valuation soared in 2016 after an analyst from Morgan Stanley, also its lead underwriter, speculated that the company’s electric cars would spawn a self-driving fleet. GM shares are up 20 percent since a June 2017 announcement that a plant to build driverless vehicles was up and running. Zoox Inc. has already raised $360 million, a huge sum for a startup with no revenue.
Of course, the era when most people ditch their driver’s licenses and rely on self-driving taxis remains far off. The technology costs more than the cars, and with few players actually testing the cars for the public, widespread adoption is years away. Even Waymo is still in the pilot stage.
The most aggressive forecasts have the majority of people driving their own cars for at least the next decade. Chris Urmson, founder of Aurora Innovation INC. and one of the pioneers of the field, counts as one of the optimists. “I can see these on the road in real numbers in five to 10 years,” he said. That means even today’s laggards have time to catch up.
After interviewing executives and technology experts and reviewing announced plans, Bloomberg has taken a snapshot of the race to develop the self-driving car. Our estimated time of autonomy is based on Level 4, the prerequisite for launching businesses with self-driving tech.
The Clear Leaders
Waymo has run self-driving cars over 5 million road miles in 25 cities and done billions of miles in computer simulation, which it uses to update its self-driving software on a weekly basis. The Google-launched company has a fleet of Chrysler Pacifica minivans that can navigate city streets in San Francisco and reach full speed on highways.
A pilot program of driverless vans will begin commercial service later this year, picking up paying passengers in Phoenix and branching out from there. Waymo Chief Executive John Krafcik recently announced a deal to add 20,000 Jaguar I-Pace SUVs to the fleet and signaled that an in-the-works alliance with Honda Motor Co. could focus on delivery and logistics.
The company also has by far the lowest rate of disengagement—times when an engineer needs to grab the wheel because the bot couldn’t handle it—among all companies testing cars in California, a hub of autonomous research that also requires detailed disclosures. It also reported fewer accidents while testing in California last year: Waymo had three collisions over more than 350,000 miles, while GM had 22 over 132,000 miles.