deel 3:
2. Mobility and the future of cars
It looks like autonomy could be a big part of mobility and, maybe, the best place for it. College campuses, office parks and urban centres where private traffic is barred would allow self-driving vehicles to operate in ideal conditions.
A case in point is Ford’s autonomous vehicle-sharing service, expected in 2021, that will be built around commercial mobility services operating within geofenced areas. In March, it created the Ford Smart Mobility LLC to act as a start-up in Dearborn and Silicon Valley. We can see how Ford has been putting these pieces together for a few years, with its various pilots on its corporate campuses and universities.
Chariot, the crowd-sourced and crowd-funded minibus service that Ford bought, is a likely model for how these services could evolve. Chariot already uses Ford vans. While Ford’s overall US sales were down 9% October, sales of Ford Transit grew 9%. It has found that such systems must be carefully designed with input from the cities – and cities are primed to do this thanks to the goosing they got from the government’s Smart City Challenge.
“Autonomy has to be done in partnership with cities. To have truly autonomous vehicle in these areas, you can’t just plop them and leave,” says Sudipto Aich, a principle researcher at Ford Research & Innovation Center.
Uber is firmly on the path of replacing its human drivers with machines. But this could actually increase capital expenses for the Ubers of the world, according to Navigant Research’s Sam Abuelsamid. Currently, he says, most of the capital expenses for ride-hailing services are borne by drivers. Uber et al must shell out for the servers to run their platforms, while spending big on marketing and R&D. He adds that the services lose money by pricing rides below market value to drive take-up.
Ten years from now, if drivers are replaced by autonomous cars, Abuelsamid says: “Those companies will have to spend to buy vehicles, and those cars will have much higher utilisation rates than we have today.” While most passenger vehicles see perhaps 10% to 15% use, he estimates that the take-up rates for ride-hailing cars will reach 70% to 80%. “So those vehicles will have a shorter life span.” He says: “It’s not clear that ride-hailing businesses are going to be sustainable just as mobility businesses. They need other ways to make money in order to be profitable. I don’t think they’ll work as standalones.”
That could be good news for automakers, and a good reason for them to either invest in or launch their own services. Most industry-watchers expect further investments and acquisitions of mobility-service companies by carmakers.
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