INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
At some point in the future, while riding along in a car, a kid may ask their parent about a distant time in the past when people used
steering wheels and pedals to control an automobile
Of course, the full realization of the &auto& part of the word — in the form of fully autonomous automobiles — is a long way off, but
there are nonetheless companies trying to build that future today.
However, changing the face of transportation is a costly business, one
that typically requires corporate backing or a lot of venture funding to realize such an ambitious goal
A recent funding round, some$128 million raised in a Series A roundby Shenzhen-basedRoadstar.ai, got us atCrunchbase Newsaskinga question:
Just how many independent, well-funded autonomous vehicles startups are out there
In short, not as many as you&d think
To investigate further, we took a look atthe set of independent companiesin Crunchbase &autonomous vehicle& category that have raised $50
million or more in venture funding
After a little bit of hand filtering, we found that the companies mostly shook out into two broad categories: those working on sensor
technologies, which are integral to any self-driving system, and more &full-stack& hardware and software companies, which incorporate
sensors, machine-learned software models and control mechanics into more integrated autonomous systems.
Full-stack self-driving vehicle
companies
Let start with full-stack companies first
The table below shows the set of independent full-stack autonomous vehicle companies operating in the market today, as well as their focus
areas, headquarter location and the total amount of venture funding raised:
Note the breakdown in focus area between the companies listed
In general, these companies are focused on building more generalized technology platforms — perhaps to sell or license to major automakers
in the future — whereas others intend to own not just the autonomous car technology, but deploy it in a fleet of on-demand taxi and other
transportation services.
Making the eyes and ears of autonomous vehicles
On the sensor side, there is also a trend, one that decidedly more
concentrated on one area of focus, as you&ll be able to discern from the table below:
Some of the most well-funded startups in the sensing
field are developing light detection and ranging (LiDAR) technologies, which basically serve as the depth-perceiving &eyes& of autonomous
vehicle systems.CYNGNintegrates a number of different sensors, LiDAR included, into its hardware arrays and software tools, which isone heck
of a pivotfor the mobile phone OS-maker formerly known as Cyanogen.
But there are other problem spaces for these sensor companies,
includingNauto&ssmart dashcam, which gathers location data and detects distracted driving, orAutotalks&sDSRCtechnology for
vehicle-to-vehicle communication
(Back in April,Crunchbase News coveredthe $5 million Series A round closed byComma, which released an open-source dashcam app.)
And unlike
some of the full-stack providers mentioned earlier, many of these sensor companies have established vendor relationships with the automotive
industry.Quanergy Systems, for example, counts components giant Delphi, luxury carmakers Jaguar and Mercedes-Benz and automakers like
Hyundai and Renault-Nissan aspartners and investors.Innoviz supplies its solid-state LiDAR technology to the BMW Group, according toits
website.
Although radar and even LiDAR are old hat by now, there continues to be innovation in sensors
According to a profile of Oryx Vision technologyinIEEE Spectrum, its &coherent optical radar& system is kind of like a hybrid of radar and
LiDAR technology in that &it uses a laser to illuminate the road ahead [with infrared light], but like a radar it treats the reflected
signal as a wave rather than a particle.& Its technology is able to deliver higher-resolution sensing over a longer distance than
traditional radar or newer LiDAR technologies.
Can startups stack up against big corporate competitors
There are plenty of autonomous
vehicle initiatives backed by deep corporate pockets
There&sWaymo, a subsidiary of Alphabet, which is subsidized by the huge amount of search profit flung off by Google
Uber has an autonomous vehicles initiative too, although it has encountered a whole host oflegaland safety issues, including holding the
unfortunate distinction of beingthe first to kill a pedestrianearlier this year.
Tesla, too, has invested considerable resources into
developing assistive technologies for its vehicles, but it too has encountered some roadblocks asits head ofAutopilot(its in-house autonomy
The company also deals with a rash of safety concerns of its own
And although Apple self-driving car program has been less publicized than others, it continues to rollonin the background
Chinese companies like Baidu and Didi Chuxing have alsolaunchedfill-stack RDfacilitiesin Silicon Valley.
Traditional automakers have also
Back in 2016, for the price of a cool $1 billion,General Motors folded Cruise Automation into its RD effortsin a widely publicized buyout
And, not to be left behind,Ford acquired a majority stakein Argo AI, alsofor $1 billion.
That leaves us with a question: Do even the
well-funded startups mentioned earlier stand a chance of either usurping market dominance from corporate incumbents or at least joining
their ranks Perhaps.
The reason why so much investor cash is going to these companies is because the market opportunity presented by
autonomous vehicle technology is almost comically enormous
It not just a matter of the car market itself — projectedto be over 80 million car sales globally in 2018 alone — but how we&ll spend
all the time and mental bandwidth freed up by letting computers take the wheel
It no wonder that so many companies, and their backers, want even a tiny piece of that pie.
