AV’s – Yes They Are Truly Coming (Cont.)

As a follow up to our last post on how large investments in AV technology by automakers may be somewhat of a gauge as to how real and soon this technology will be arriving, we recently came across this rundown of investments and advancements in AV’s by large firms. This text comes from the late 2016 Rocky Mountain Institute’s ‘Peak Car Ownership’ report.

• “Apple is likely working on an advanced electric autonomous vehicle and recently invested $1 billion in Chinese ride-hailing service Didi Chuxing.
• Google has been testing electric autonomous vehicles in Mountain View, California, and Austin, Texas, for many months and recently expanded to Arizona and Washington.
• Uber recently began testing autonomous Ford Sedans and Volvo SUVs in Pittsburgh. CEO Travis Kalanick called autonomous vehicles providing Uber rides “existential” to the company’s survival.
• GM, which recently invested $500 million in Lyft, is testing autonomous electric Chevy Bolts in San Francisco.
• Tesla may be close to launching a mobility service. Morgan Stanley recently indicated that Tesla is in good position to launch its own electric, automated, on-demand mobility service by 2018 and modeled this insight into its relatively high valuation of the company. More recently, CEO Elon Musk released his “master plan part deux,” which details Tesla’s plan to launch an electric automated mobility service.
• Daimler’s carshare subsidiary, Car2Go, has autonomous ambitions.
• Volkswagen’s $300 million investment in European TNC Gett signals that it too is entering the mobility services market.
• Ford CEO Mark Fields recently announced that Ford will mass produce autonomous vehicles (with no steering wheel) for use in ride-hailing services by 2021″