Waymo, the autonomous car development company, recently made history by launching cars on public roads without any safety drivers behind the wheel. The tests aren’t limited to one or two routes, and the cars are able to go anywhere within a defined space, in this case, the space being Chandler in Arizona.

Driverless cars have the potential to completely transform the way we travel. In his most recent TED talk, even Elon Musk, co-founder of Tesla, said that “by the end of this year, an autonomous car will be able to leave a parking space in Los Angeles, navigate all the way across America, and park in a space in New York.” With this shift, there will also arrive a plethora of benefits; from reduced travel costs, to increased road safety and more efficient trips.

We all have, at some point of time in our lives, faced the nightmare of holiday traffic. Long weekends and holidays like Christmas and New Year’s are considered to be some of the most popular and busiest travel days of the year, with many travellers driving to their destinations by car. The advent of self-driving cars could reduce, if not fully eliminate, all this holiday traffic. Self-driving vehicles will be able to travel quickly, instead of being stuck in traffic on congested highways. They will be able to drive closer to the cars in front of them, at faster speeds, and navigate narrow lanes than are generally prone to human error.

Image source: EnergyKids

Self-driving cars may even help travellers plan ahead for increased efficiency. Once the vehicle knows the destination, it could suggest an alternate route based on the expected number of vehicles on the usual route. The car could then also recommend that travellers leave a day earlier or late, or even at two in the morning, to avoid getting stuck.

Autonomous cars could be a game-changer for the airline and rail industry as well. With increased efficiency and reduced costs, people may choose to travel by car than planes or trains. This, in turn, could drastically cut down flying costs, as the airline industry tries to keep up with the advent of this new technology and changing passenger demands. Additionally, self-driving cars allow for point-to-point transportation, which means no more wasted time travelling to a bus or train station or the airport.

Self-driving cars are all set to alter the landscape of mobility and revolutionize the automotive industry, public transport and swathes of the global population. While there is still a lot that needs to be sorted in terms of acceptance and readying our infrastructure for such cars, the excitement in the air is tangible with a faster and more efficient future of travel on the way.

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Driverless cars are the new black. They are being looked at as the next big thing in ground transportation and Uber as the hero of this upcoming trend. The American ride hailing company recently started actually sending driverless vehicles to pick passengers for their Uber rides in Pittsburgh, of course not without their experts taking notes and ready to take control.

What was just a simpler method to call a cab is about to be the name that could (potentially) revolutionise the entire transportation and urban planning structure. Of course Uber isn’t the only one making the attempt here, far from that, but it certainly seems to be in an aggressive position.

The reasons are obvious. Right now, Uber is in a strong spot because of the network of full and part time drivers it has built over these years. This comes with trust it has built with these drivers over time, exactly why new driver partners keep signing up to drive with the platform. Another factor driving this is the other side, travellers. It is a chain in which both the sides are driving each other, just like many other examples you would pick from the access economy. If they are not aggressive and someone like Ford or Tesla has a fully autonomous car ready, it won’t be hard for them to scale up and eat Uber for breakfast. Replicating the technology once it is here won’t be tough and it would be easier for any brand to work on just the demand side rather than both demand and supply side.

However, to actually make a significant impact on the travel and transportation industry, brands won’t just have to work to get people acquainted to the idea of driverless cars. They will have to get people to ditch the idea of keeping a car. Uber has driven that change for some, but there still will be people who would not want to give up the ownership for the freedom that comes with it. Uber alone won’t be able to get people to give that up. To achieve that, car rental companies will have to play their part. Uber will offer the service but to get people there, car rental services will have to be the bridge.

Compared to the cab hailing services, these companies are making it even easier for people to not own a vehicle for short or long distance travel. Ownership of fleet will also be a big question when the ride hailing companies have developed road ready driverless cars. The likes of Uber don’t own any vehicles and the rental companies can actually take ownership of the fleet.

There are too many factors that will come into play and while we all are making guesses, how all this will shape up in the time to come is anyone’s guess.

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BMW, Mercedes Benz, Volvo, Google, GM, Lyft and many others are working on making the next big thing in ground transportation a reality. Many of these automobile and tech companies have promised to bring driverless cars by the year 2020. This will have a significant impact on travel and automobile industry.

(Image: Shelly by cblue98/CC BY-SA 2.0)

While these two major industries seem to be affected by the upcoming cars, the impact could be much greater than we can see right now. We discussed and debated on the topic and here is how we think autonomous vehicles will affect different industries:

Car rental

Arguments vary about how things will change for the car rental industry. The conventional taxis are already at disadvantage with the entry of cab hailing companies and the episode doesn’t seem to get better for them even when driverless cars arrive. Brands like Uber and Lyft will have a different situation though. Both the companies are pushing for driverless cars working with other brands that have expertise in automobile industry and once these cars arrive, these companies will be able to eliminate the friction that arises with the communication on driver’s end.

Car manufacturers

Car companies, as they are now, stand to lose the most with the entry of driverless vehicles. Driverless cars will bring down ownership costs and reduce the number of cars in a household. Very often people own multiple vehicles with a large fraction of the vehicle life spent in parking. Driverless cars would allow a single car to be used by multiple users reducing the need of multiple vehicles. Car companies will become service companies and it has started with many major manufacturers like BMW and Volvo already operating rental companies. As expected, many of them, including GM and Ford are already working on their versions of autonomous vehicles.

Media & advertising

Media consumption is already on the rise and we will have more time to spare when our cars will start driving us to work. Most of us will choose to consume media during this time. Leaping ahead, the Swedish manufacturer Volvo even showcased a prototype infotainment system for autonomous cars when they arrive. Along with this, we might see brands use this as an advertising opportunity while we consume media. Location based marketing might just go up few levels.

Logistics

As the autonomous vehicles will make the entire ground transportation system more efficient, logistics is certainly going to see the advantages. Manufacturers are working on driverless trucks for long distance logistics while intra city transportation of goods will be taken care of by smaller vehicles.

Airlines

Short haul flights offer a very inefficient medium of transportation. The airports are generally located away from the city centre and travellers often spend hours travelling to the airport and waiting there for a flight that has a span of just 40-50 minutes. As autonomous vehicles will allow people to travel long distances without the driving fatigue, more people would prefer that over short flights.

Hotels

At times we book hotels because it is too late to drive back from a meeting or we are too tired after a long day during a business trip. This will again be eliminated with the entry of autonomous vehicles as instead of opting for a stay at a hotel, people would choose to travel while relaxing in the comfort of their car. This of course would follow at a much later stage after the commercial availability of driverless cars as initially it would require the driver to be engaged in some way or other before full autonomous vehicles come into play.

Insurance

Insurance is a huge business and a significant fraction of the industry is driven by the automobiles. A large number of vehicles get involved in crashes all over the world and almost 1.3 million causalities and 20-50 million injuries are caused by road accidents. Driverless cars will eliminate these road accidents removing the need of multiple kinds of insurances. With the insurances that will be applicable, liability will be a major challenge that will have to be tackled.

Real estate

Calling an Uber is easy and it gives you the option to skip driving in rush hour on a weekday. However one still prefers living closer to city centre to ensure basic amenities and workplaces are nearby. The costs of real estate are determined on the basis of location which means such locations are costlier. As the transport becomes more efficient and congestion is minimised, the location based pricing will have lesser role to play and more development will be seen in suburban areas.

Communication

Disappointing network coverage and spotty data connections will no longer cut it when we enter the era of connected cars. The cars will not only have to deal with a lot of data to drive themselves but will also exchange data with centralised systems and other cars on the roads and that means we will need robust networks with high speed connectivity. Along with this, data security will also become a major concern brining more opportunities in this field.

What other industries do you think will be affected by the arrival of driverless cars? Do share

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It has become rather difficult to predict which companies will lead the automobile industry in future. At this point it appears that the car, as we know it, will fade away to make way for connected autonomous vehicles that will redefine urban mobility. Tech companies are pushing themselves out of their comfort zone and trying to take the front row in the automobile industry. Earlier it was a space dominated by the big names but as the segment calls for innovation, we can see tech companies entering the picture.

Autonomous cars will significantly change the way we see road transport in future and now a name from China has joined the race. Chinese firm LeEco has announced a car that is electric, fast and autonomous. The car is called LeSEE and during the unveiling, the car managed to operate by following few voice commands spoken into a phone by company CEO Jia Yueting.

LeEco is new to this game and has previously produced mobile phones. Even before it jumped into the autonomous electric car thing itself, it has invested in Faradey Future, the company that made headlines at CES for an outrageous electric car concept.

The car is loaded to the brim with technology similar to Tesla but this is a little louder when it comes to design, probably because it is a concept at this stage. However this strengthens the fact that road travel is changing and Chinese manufacturers don’t want to be left out in the race for autonomous cars. The market is growing fast and the Chinese government is supporting them. They are incentivising electric car manufacturers to innovate and develop cleaner and smarter vehicles.

The car will be called LeSEE and will debut at the upcoming Beijing Motor Show. Tesla, we are looking at you.

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A large number of brands are showing interest in autonomous cars and they will probably transform both urban transport and long distance travel in a big way. With the motive to join the race of developing autonomous cars, Chinese internet search giant Baidu is planning to develop self-driving cars in China within the next three years. Earlier this year we learned that they are working on a prototype and it has already completed tests on a route with varied roads and environmental conditions.

(Photo Credit: Image by Wall Street Journal)

Baidu’s two prototypes BMW 3 Series Gran Turismo autonomous cars successfully completed a 30-kilometer (18.6 miles) test drive around Beijing, which included complex driving actions such as U-turns, left turns, changing lanes, and merging into traffic from on-ramps. The route included highways with the car’s speed peaking at 100 kilometers per hour during the tests. The route was mapped out by the Highly Automated Driving (HAD) maps.

According to a report, a Baidu spokesperson said:

“We’ve tested the car at night and day, as well as in medium rain, and – since this is Beijing – in smog of course. The models we’ll develop next year will have even more sensors, and we believe it will be able to handle all weather and road conditions.”

Baidu’s cars are well-equipped with a laser radar, sensors and cameras with varying visibility ranges. Its software draws on Baidu’s highly detailed maps as well as its “deep-learning” technology. For the fast development of these future cars, the company hired Stanford researcher Andre Ng who has helped set up Google’ artificial intelligence centre. The autonomous cars will operate on fixed routes or within set urban areas. Baidu will co-operate with some governments to provide shared vehicles like a shuttle service for public use. Baidu’s next steps involve testing the prototype cars in new situations like narrow city streets or wide boulevards. China faces unpredictable driving conditions. This can be a challenge for the company.

According to a survey, 93% of Chinese respondents were interested in owning a car with autonomous functions, compared with 76% of Germans and 67% of Americans. This proves the fact that the Chinese people have the highest demand for it. Contrarily, China still needs to enact laws for autonomous cars to run on roads.

Wang Jing, Baidu’s senior vice-president, stated that the company is establishing a new business unit that will work on developing autonomous vehicles for use as public shuttles. Mr. Wang will be heading this unit. Currently, Baidu is in discussions with the Chinese and foreign automakers.

Baidu is facing competition with Google and other traditional automakers to develop self-driving cars. Google has 50-plus self-driving cars that have covered more than a million miles and are currently being tested on public roads in urban areas of California, Austin, Texas. Baidu might introduce an autonomous car this year. Once developed, this will be a major milestone for both Baidu and China’s evolution towards the driverless vehicle future.

Brands are betting big on the new autonomous car technologies and with the current pace, things look very promising. Google’s autonomous car is going places and the cab hailing service Uber showed interest in these developments for future applications. Baidu’s autonomous car is another example of how the travel industry is assimilating technology for developing futuristic vehicles.

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Love it or hate it, the autonomous cars are coming. While there is a whole community of passionate petrolheads all over, cars still are nothing more than a tool for a large number of people and these people will obviously love the change. These cars will change urban mobility as well as long distance travel. This will have a huge impact on the way we travel and it will go way beyond the automobile industry.

Shelley, the autonomous Audi racecar

(Image: Shelley by Cblue98/ CC BY-SA 2.0)

In an interview with a magazine, an Audi strategist recently suggested that when the autonomous cars go mainstream, we will see a significant drop in use of hotels and domestic flights. Business travellers, who would otherwise book a hotel or early morning flight, will let the car drive them to their destination while they relax. Volvo recently showcased an example of what such a car cabin might look like.

Now we have learned about another development in this space. The Washington Post reported about a new patent Google has applied for. This patent details how the self-driving vehicle would deal with pedestrians. When we drive, eye contact and hand signals play a large role in communicating with the pedestrians but that can’t be the case with autonomous vehicles. That is why Google plans on mounting displays around the vehicle to communicate messages to the pedestrians. This is to make it less defensive to the outside elements.

Not only that, but the patent also includes possibilities of other options like a speaker on the outside that would play alerts out loud. Another interesting possibility is a robotic arm that can communicate through gestures. Details on how it will look aren’t available as the patent doesn’t reveal information about it but we are eager to have a look.

Google and other manufacturers working on autonomous cars are taking every step required to ensure they are as safe as possible. Governments are still trying to work with the regulations and the manufacturers know that any mishaps can result in major setbacks to the project. Google recently released the monthly report which shows some good signs. You can read more about it here.

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