Driverless Technology Business Ranking

On the evening of January 17, Beijing time, Navigant Research, a market research organization, released its annual automatic driving technology business ranking. In the latest list, GM and Alphabet’s unmanned division, Waymo, ranked first and second. Surprisingly, Apple and Tesla actually ranked at the bottom. In addition, Baidu’s driverless car project also appeared on the list.

Since 2015, Navigant has paid attention to 20 companies that are all developing unmanned technology every year, and has released the list of driverless technologies. Navigant's list has divided all companies into four categories: leaders, competitors, challengers and chasers.

Last year, only four companies took the top echelon of this list, namely the leaders. They were GM, Ford, Daimler and Renault-Nissan. The leaders on this year's list are 8 companies. They are General Motors, Waymo, Daimler-Bosch, Ford, Volkswagen, BMW-Intel-FCA, Aptiv, and Renault-Nissan.

Waymo, Intel, Bosch, and Aptiv were able to log on to the first tier, illustrating a trend: In addition to traditional car companies, technology companies have also begun to accelerate in the battle for unmanned technology.

Universal and Waymo lead the way

At last year's North American International Station, the most-respected company was not actually a car company, but the unmanned department of the Google parent company Rainbow, Waymo. At last year’s auto show, Waymo shocked all car companies and the entire world with a driverless prototype. The entire automotive industry was suddenly surrounded by a sense of fear. Although Waymo did not continue to participate in the auto show this year, they are still rapidly developing their own autopilot technology.

In this year's list, the top two are the conventional car maker General Motors and Alphabet's Waymo. Waymo has successfully surpassed traditional car companies such as Ford, Daimler and Renault-Nissan.

After last year, General Motors still ranked first on this list. They spent a lot of money on autonomous driving technology. The company has acquired CruiseAutomation, a pioneering start-up, and Strobe, a laser radar company. It has also expanded. The company's car sharing service Maven. In addition, GM also plans to deploy a driverless taxi fleet by 2019, and the design of the car in this team is radical, with even the steering wheel and throttle and brake pedals. More importantly, GM has the ability to mass-produce Chevrolet Bolts driverless cars, which makes it possible for them to complete the deployment of driverless car fleets in the next few years.

Compared with GM, Waymo's biggest disadvantage is that it does not have the capacity to mass-produce cars. But in mid-2017, the company took a series of very bold moves, such as cooperation with Fiat-Chrysler, Lyft, and Avis, to make up for their inability to mass-produce cars. In addition, the company also plans to launch a fully unmanned travel service in Arizona in early 2018. If it can successfully complete this goal, they will become the first travel service company to completely abandon the human driver.

Navigant believes that the first unmanned car that ordinary users can use in the future is likely to come from Universal or Waymo. General Motors, a 109-year-old veteran car company, and Waymo, just one year after its establishment, will surely set off a fierce battle on the battlefield of driverless technology.

Apple and Tesla bottom

Compared with GM and Waymo, the Other two big-name companies have not been able to make a big breakthrough. They are Apple and Tesla. Navigant pointed out that although Apple had never produced such complex products as automobiles before, Apple has ready-made technical capabilities that make it unique in the competition in the driverless car market.

Apple has been applying for permission to test unmanned cars in California, and the company’s driverless test vehicles have been discovered in public areas many times. Although Apple has never promised to launch a self-driving car, facing such a huge market with a total value of 900 billion U.S. dollars, Apple should not give up easily.

Then there was Tesla. Navigant's evaluation of Tesla was sure to make Elon Musk and his fans unsatisfied, but sometimes reality does make people feel sad. Tesla has always been the company with the highest profile in autopilot technology. They have even promised to achieve Level 5 autopilot in the near future. You know, most companies are afraid to make such promises to consumers.

However, Navigant believes that Tesla’s commitments have gone too far and their actual performance has not matched the previous commitment.

In May 2017, Musk announced in a TED speech that he would achieve Level 5 fully automatic driving before 2019. The so-called Level 5 automatic driving means that the vehicle can complete self-driving under all conditions without human intervention. However, he promised 80% of this commitment. At present, Tesla Motors lacks the hardware to keep the sensors clean. In bad weather conditions such as rain and snow, the sensors will inevitably appear blurred. Prior to this, Tesla purchased a batch of computing hardware from Nvidia, but even Nvidia itself expressed doubts about whether these hardware can support Level 5 automatic driving.

In addition, Navigant also pointed out that Tesla is currently struggling with the lack of capacity in the Model3. He also believes that it is difficult for the company to implement a sustainable business model. Putting it in plain language, Tesla’s financial situation is now a mess. Navigant concludes: "If Tesla doesn't make fundamental changes to the operating methods, but only relies on a great vision, it may not be enough."

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