Autonomous driving technology has experienced great leaps in algorithm, chip computing power, sensing hardware upgrade, sensing information fusion method, Big Data accumulation, and cooperative vehicle infrastructure in the last five years. The Level 4 autonomous driving technology considered beyond reach five years ago is looming its realization while expected by the mass. In terms of the overall development trend, the IT industry has, among all industries, attained particularly prominent R&D achievements. In short, to advance the technology to the stage of Level 4 mass production, myriads of capital and human resources as well as the prolonged timeframe would be unbearable to any single technology company. Just as what I've mentioned in several of my previous posts, the IT industry can only move towards a win-win business model when it works hand-in-hand with automakers. From the other point of view, we would wonder why the large automakers with great strength refrain from utilizing the foresight and taking initiatives to develop the core technologies of autonomous driving.
First of all, the technology of fully autonomous driving is derived from Artificial Intelligence (AI), which will never be the strength of traditional automobile manufacturers; the Level 2 ADAS assistance system developed by the car manufacturers as demonstrated in the showroom nowadays is essentially an addition from the perspective of “assisting” drivers, which is far from the AI fully autonomous driving we intend to discuss. Under such circumstances, automakers are inherently passive to the new technology; secondly, automakers would not engage in the R&D of an “epoch-making” technology with uncertain mass-production schedule and billions of dollars of monetary contributions that may eventually dilute their original product and brand positioning (appeals of self-driving cars are the driving automation as replacement of human driving, which removes the human factor from the equation of human-vehicle interaction, thereby leading to absence of projection of owner personalities or product positioning), which is far more massive than the impacts brought by electric cars on ICE cars; furthermore, the autonomous driving technology is not classified as mandatory by government regulations, and the car manufacturers would certainly be held accountable for any events of car accidents resulting from its self-driving cars. Why should traditional automobile manufacturers spend lots of money to ask for trouble!? At this point, we can understand why the major car manufacturers have just begun to seek alliances, cooperation and even mergers and acquisitions with technology companies to engage in and to avoid falling behind in this unknown battlefield of technology in the future.
In the latest Guidehouse survey on various aspects of global autonomous driving technology including marketing strategy, financial strength, and others, we can see that the top manufacturers in the leading echelon are all of technology industry or self-driving startups, including Waymo by Google, Nvidia the leader in GPU, self-driving startup Argo.ai co-owned by Ford and VW, Baidu, which has formed a smart car company with Geely Auto, and Cruise, a company owned by GM and invested by Honda, etc. Except for Baidu, which is a Chinese company, the other four players are authentic American entities; meanwhile, as we think about when the autonomous driving technology can be implemented, the “trio” electric technologies (battery/electric control/motor) and EV-specific chassis systems are also the foundations determining the success of electric cars. Following compilation of the information from the above parties, there is a chance for me to roughly interpret the trend of influences by autonomous driving technology in the next 10 years…
- The United States and China will eventually grasp the business opportunities brought about by the initiation of autonomous driving technology; while Germany and Japan, the two major automotive powers, would take longer to catch up should they fail to seize the opportunities to cooperate with the technology leaders.
- Level 4 autonomous driving requires extremely high capability of computing, which can be translated into a huge power consumption; the battery capacity will have a significant breakthrough in about 2025, and by 2030, the batteries with high capacity are expected to be put into mass production at low cast and can be coupled with Level 4 self-driving system.
- The two web search engine tycoons Google and Baidu possess bountiful AI technologies, HD maps, as well as data resources, shaping implicitly the competition for the autonomous driving technology by the two representing the West and the East respectively; their technology platforms are bound to be adopted by various automakers.
- Nvidia owns the top core technology of chips for self-driving systems, and it is speculated that many German and Japanese automakers will form alliances and cooperate with it to keep up with the progress.
- GM and Ford, the two old American car manufacturers, seem to have a clear orientation with respect to development of autonomous driving technology, and the revival of traditional American vehicles in 10 years becomes plausible.
- It is estimated that the fully autonomous driving technology will not be put to production for general traffic use by 2030, and it may not be popularized until 2035 due to the amortization for costs of software/hardware and investments at the initial stage. In addition, as the 6G communication network is expected to be introduced around 2030, cooperative vehicle infrastructure accompanied with such network will greatly improve the safety of full autonomous driving.
- Various startup electric vehicle brands have been launched in the recent years. I would exclude the possibility that more new self-driving car brands will be established in the future, and in lieu of such trend will be self-driving vehicles (or so-called smart electric vehicles) launched by brands surviving the fierce competitions among growth and decline and reorganization of the existing startup electric vehicle brands.
- It is estimated that at least half of the traditional car manufacturers will gradually decline or even disappear after 2035; the reason for such phenomenon would be the prevalence of fully self-driving cars which results in a narrowing of brand positioning differences and a compressed market survival space, especially when influence by startup brands start to increase.