INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Autonomous vehicles are often painted as a utopian-like technology that will transform parking lots into parks and eliminate traffic
fatalities — a number that reached 1.35 million globally in 2018.
Even if, as many predict, autonomous vehicles are deployed en masse, the
road to that future promises to be long, chaotic and complex
The emergence of ride-hailing, car-sharing and micromobility hints at some of the speed bumps between today modes of transportation and more
futuristic means, like AVs and flying cars
Entire industries face disruption in this new mobility world, perhaps none so thoroughly as automotive.
Autonomous-vehicle ubiquity may be
decades away, but automakers, startups and tech companies are already clambering to be king of the ‘future of transportation& hill.
How
does a company, city or country &own& this future of transportation? While there no clear winner today, companies as well as local and
federal governments can take actions and make investments today to make sure they&re not left behind, according to Zoox CEO Aicha Evans and
Jennifer Granholm, who spoke about the future of cities on stage this month at Disrupt SF.
Local = opportunity
Evolution in mobility is
occurring at a global scale, but transportation is also very local, Evans said
Because every local transit system is tailored to the geography and the needs of its residents, these unique requirements create
opportunities at a local level and encourages partnerships between different companies.
This is no longer just a Silicon Valley versus
Detroit story; Europe, China, Singapore have all piled in as well
Instead of one mobility company that will rule them all, Evans and Granholm predict more partnerships between companies, governments and
even economic and tech strongholds like Silicon Valley.
We&re already seeing examples of this in the world of autonomous vehicles
For instance, Ford invested $1 billion into AV startup Argo AI in 2017
Two years later, VW Group announced a partnership with Ford that covers a number of areas, including autonomy (via a new investment by VW in
Argo AI)and collaboration on development of electric vehicles.
BMW and Daimler, which agreed in 2018 to merge their urban mobility services
into a single holding company, announced in February plans to unify these services and sink $1.1 billion into the effort
The two companies are also part of a consortium that includes Audi, Intel, Continental and Bosch, that owns mapping and location data
service company HERE.
There are numerous other examples of companies collaborating after concluding that going it alone wasn''t as feasible
