A life-and-death tussle between rival billionaires, outlaw hackers and desperate taxi firms is
playing out on city streets around the world.
And the quest to be first mover in this brave new world of self-driving automobiles will
create big winners and losers.
So how close are the major players to true automation?
And what’s at stake if they get it wrong?
Join us trackside as we examine who’s winning the self-driving car race.
The manner in which we zoom around our towns and cities is ripe for revolution in a way
not seen since the birth of the internal combustion engine.
Demand for autonomous vehicles is set to surge by tens of millions in the coming years.
And Goldman Sachs suggests the rise of so-called robo-taxis will expand the global ride-hailing
business from present revenues of $5 billion to $285 billion by the end of this decade.
Imagine trillions of hours of productive time clawed back because we won’t be gawping
at the road ahead.
Then imagine how pleasant our city centers might be without endless hectares hogged by
greedy parking lots.
To reach this utopia, self-driving vehicles need to ascend the 1-5 scale established by
the SAE, or Society of Auto Engineers.
Let’s look at that scale.
Level one automation is the most basic and covers things like traffic-sensitive cruise
control that uses lasers to monitor traffic.
It’s been available on some Mercedes models since the late nineties.
Honda introduced a related feature called ‘lane keep assist in 2008.
Level two automates a couple more factors, including limited steering assistance.
It can raise the alarm if a human driver is tired, and can nudge along in slow-moving
traffic.
Many new cars have this built-in as standard.
Level three can do most driving by itself but requires human hands on the wheel at all
times just in case.
Level four is where it gets interesting – fully autonomous motoring, albeit only in strictly
defined areas, like cities, that are pre-mapped to the nth degree.
Level four means drivers can stop paying attention, but they can’t go everywhere.
Finally, level five means full independent automation, to the extent drivers can work,
play or doze and still get where they’re going in one piece.
Now that’s out of the way, let’s meet some of the runners and riders in the self-driving
race.
Perhaps the most eye-catching, not to say eccentric, entry in the contest is Comma AI.
The comma was founded by legendary tech provocateur and Olympic-grade scowler George Hotz.
Hotz rose to fame as the first hacker to crack an iPhone, aged only 17.
He’s since been in hot water with Sony for hacking their PS3.
Hotz joined the self-drive race in unconventional fashion after he upgraded up his own Honda
Acura to be self-driving, kinda, with a glovebox full of electronics and a shop-bought lidar
sensor.
Hotz’s commercial product, the Comma Two, is roughly the size of a smartphone and plugs
into assorted modern Toyotas, Hyundai’s, and Hondas, and offers modest level 2 automation.
His promise?
To ‘Make driving chill’.
Not too chill, however.
A rear-facing camera in the Comma device, which costs $999 and fits snugly under the
rear-view mirror, will pull you up sharply if it senses your eyes drifting off the road.
Another upstart you may not have heard of is Nuro.
Based in California, Nuro is making great strides in self-driving vehicles, although
probably not in the way you’re picturing.
Nuro specializes in low-speed delivery robots optimized for residential neighborhoods.
In Texas, Nuro vehicles have been busily delivering pizza for Dominoes, or groceries on behalf
of supermarket giant Kroger.
Nuro’s business model is especially attractive to skittish investors, as self-driving vehicles
that only move at around 25 miles per hour are unlikely to kill anyone.
Among the more glamorous contenders for the self-driving crown is of course Tesla.
True to form, our old mate Elon Musk promised a self-driving Tesla could complete a self-driven
trip across the US in 2017.
That never happened.
Still, thanks to the way Tesla software updates over the air, every model that rolls off of
the production line currently has the ability to go to level five.
Musk just needs those pesky pen-pushing regulators to give him the chance.
And besides, countless drivers as we speak are using Tesla’s lane centering, traffic-aware
cruise control, self-parking, automatic lane changes, and semi-autonomous navigation.
Tesla’s vast fleet is collecting vital data all the time to refine and improve its algorithms,
running though twin onboard Tesla chips that are said – by Musk, naturally – to be
best in class.
Another big dog in the fight is GM.
Through its partnership with AI upstart Cruise, the old-school Detroit maker has been running
self-driving electric Chevy Bolts around San Francisco since 2017.
The thinking being that if they can navigate the hilly, chaotic, weatherbeaten streets
of San Fran, they can cope pretty much anywhere.
So why don’t we all have one by now?
For the answer, we need to think about just what a fully self-driving future will look
like.
Many analysts think the current model of car ownership – where families buy one or two
vehicles that spend most of their time idle on driveways or parking lots, will vanish.
For most people, and most applications, some version of ride-hailing or on-off ride sharing
– perhaps akin to a Netflix subscription – will make more sense.
So those familiar lines of traffic, full of stressed-out individuals sat in their five-seater
two-ton metal boxes, should be a thing of the past.
As such, instead of trying to convince everybody to buy pricy autonomous Chevy Bolts, GM is
putting its considerable resources behind a six-seater robot carriage named the Cruise
Origin.
Set for production very soon – GM’s factory in Detroit is reportedly ‘finalizing tooling’
– the Cruise Origin promises a slicker experience than regular public transport, without the
high overheads of private car ownership.
Crucially, it also means GM can install the very latest and most expensive LIDAR sensors,
which in themselves would put a conventional family car outside most consumers’ price
range.
Plenty of other companies are pursuing this ‘mobility as service’ model – as opposed
to the likes of Tesla, who want to sell you an actual car.
Take Zoox, the stylish upstart recently purchased by Amazon for a cool $1.3 billion.
It’s been trialing ride-hailing service in Las Vegas, with the suggestion Zoox vehicles
could easily be re-jigged to ferry packages around for the company’s deep-pocketed new
overlords.
For now, though, the undisputed leader in the US robotaxi race is Waymo.
A subsidiary of Google parent company Alphabet, Waymo is already raising billions in private
equity capital, and impressively runs a fleet of some 600 driverless robotaxis around Phoenix,
Arizona.
This is a solid level-four, mostly autonomous service, by the way – not only can the passengers
relax and take their hands off the wheel, but they don’t even need to know how to
drive at all.
If the passenger is distressed at any time they can punch a button to speak to a human
‘ride support agent’ and customer feedback is sought throughout the ride.
Waymo already has millions of miles of public road driving under its belt, and the service
– partly offered through ride-hailing app Lyft – is popular.
Still, critics point to the fact the comparatively tiny region of Phoenix in which the service
operates is a doddle compared to most driving scenarios, and that the company has singularly
failed to deliver on its promise of tens of thousands of vehicles rolled out by the start
of this year.
The rewards for whichever company gets it right will be huge.
Analysts reckon human drivers account for up to 80% of running costs.
By removing the driver from the equation, taxi profits can and will soar.
Not to mention trucking, another area where Waymo is leading the pack.
Some 70% of goods in the US travel by truck, so any system that brings down costs, without
sacrificing safety, would be a game-changer.
Still, the potential downsides are greater – a fully-laden artic gunning along the
highway at 70mph can do an awful lot of damage if anything goes awry.
For now, taxis are where the world’s attention is focused.
And as you might expect, the big taxi firms have done their best to dominate the space.
Uber has spent years working on the problem through its ATG – advanced technologies
group – subdivision.
Despite its mammoth size and profile, Uber has yet to turn a profit through its core
business.
As such, the move into autonomous vehicles is no abstract academic aspiration.
It’s about Uber’s commercial survival.
Still, various costly setbacks – and the tragic death of an Arizona pedestrian in 2018
– prompted Uber to recently sell its AV operation to Aurora, which is itself closely
aligned with Japanese giant Toyota.
To be clear, Uber remains a stakeholder in Aurora, hoping when – if – the technology
finally matures it’ll be able to use Aurora-powered robotaxis without absorbing all the punishing
R&D outlay.
Which is similar to rival Lyft’s situation.
In 2017 Lyft launched its ambitiously named ‘Level 5’ division, with the promise that
by 2021 the majority of Lyft rides would take place in autonomous vehicles.
Thousands of engineers were duly hired at a shiny dedicated Palo Alto facility, with
big-ticket AI acquisition Blue Vision Labs alone setting the taxi giant back a cool 72
million bucks.
That dream, alas, came to nothing.
Lyft also sold its Autonomous Vehicle arm to Toyota, saving a reported $100million a
year in apparently bottomless r&d spending.
The ace up Lyft’s sleeve, for now at least, is its cozy relationship with Waymo.
If Waymo can clear the necessary regulatory hurdles, Lyft will benefit from that.
But what if we told you the real self-driving leader is none of these high-profile big beasts?
Traveling under the radar, so to speak, is Mobileye.
Formerly a Tesla partner – before leaving after a dustup regarding Elon Musk’s attitude
to safety – Mobileye is an Israeli firm bought by Intel for $15 billion in 2017.
Mobileye’s plan is to license its self-driving hardware to legacy automakers – the likes
of BMW, Volkswagen, and Nissan – which neatly solves the thorny problems of mass production
and rollout at a stroke.
Having a chipmaker as its sugar daddy role is also helpful from a hardware development
angle – Mobileye’s sophisticated split-beam Lidar is industry-leading, using clever doppler
shifts to calculate distance and speed with unprecedented accuracy.
Mobileye’s greatest advantage is that its stack could be used for both private ownership
– like Tesla – or public rideshare models.
Delivery startup Udely has already committed to Mobileye technology for its promised fleet
of 3,000 courier bots.
The dark horse in this race, as so often, is China.
A lively plethora of tech startups like AutoX, pony.ai, and WeRide compete in the space with
Uber equivalent Didi Chuxing and even search giant Baidu’s self-drive project.
The Chinese aren’t quite level 5 just yet, but thanks to the country’s more entrepreneur-friendly
regulatory framework we can expect to see widespread commercial robotaxis at the very
least in China itself, then exported to the rest of the world.
Baidu, for one, has already trialed self-driving buses and reportedly has a fleet of more than
300 Level 4 test vehicles working daily in 23 cities.
Remember iPhone hacker George Hotz?
When US regulators arched a quizzical eyebrow in the direction of his DIY self-drive plans
he sniffily replied.
‘Would much rather spend my life building amazing tech than dealing with regulators
and lawyers.
‘See you in Shenzen.’
What do you think?
Is China at an unfair advantage?
Will you give up your own car in favor of a ride-sharing app?
Let us know in the comments and don’t forget to subscribe for more racy tech content.