Autonomous transport future is not arriving soon

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“Autonomy Day”, April 2019, the event hosted by Tesla. Tesla felt that everything has been so focused on the Model 3 and the rest of the company’s story has been lost. Elon Musk was confident about bringing forward fully – autonomous robotaxis by the end of 2020. However, we can see that the prediction was too optimistic as self – driving vehicles are still quite challenging to achieve.

What is a Robotaxi anyways?
We can define it as a fully – autonomous vehicle that can pick up and drop passengers at their destinations without any need of a human driver. Also, we can accept that drivers are the reason for the high costs of transportation services at some level. It is believed that autonomous cars can help bring down these costs and make transportation more affordable for every use case. However, unlike games and apps, launching an autonomous taxi has real risks that can cause injury or even death. Software – defined architecture and Nvidia’s chips optimized for deep neural networks are the heart of autonomous vehicles. On the other hand, it is not easy to just deploy this infrastructure and get it going hurled. Launching a robotaxi is still an idea for the far off future.

At the same event, Pete Bannon, the designer of the full self – driving chip, described the system, what timeline was for the system, and design requirements. The biggest takeaway, Tesla did look at the problem and work to solve specifically the issues they had for chips, which you can do only by designing a new chip, which is something most companies don’t have the luxury to do, as it is extremely expensive.

Tesla’s Robotaxi
It is became a real possibility talk after Musk claimed in 2019. Musk stated; Next year for sure, we will have over a million robotaxis on the road. The fleet wakes up with an over – the – air update. That’s all it takes.

It only created hype in the market. The reason is that Tesla already has thousands of models running on the road deployed with eight cameras each to collect video recordings from all angles. Industry experts still doubted any possibilities of such autonomous vehicles, as the Waymo’s CEO John Krafcik said; For us, Tesla is not a competitor at all. We manufacture a completely autonomous driving system. Tesla is an automaker that is developing a high quality driver assistance system.
He also pointed out, that a company can’t keep improving its driver assistance system and hope for it to become fully – autonomous one day. However, Musk responded to these comments saying; To my surprise, Tesla has better AI technology, hardware, and software than Waymo.
And Tesla’s robotaxi continues to be under the microscope of professionals thanks to the high expectations set by Elon. While he believes that Tesla is quite close to SAE Level 5 full autonomous, his promise keep backfiring at him.

What is the Market share of Robotaxi?
It is rising market, expected to be worth $1.03 billion in 2023 and rise to $38.61 billion in 2030. The pandemic showed a massive downfall in the transportation industry as drivers could not risk by taking random passengers. Customers also believe an infected driver is a high – risk carrier. The industry is highly reliant on drivers, and the need for robotaxis is real case. This triggered a rise of investors interested resulting in the increase of market value. The major shareholders of this market include:
Waymo, Lyft, Uber, Tasle itself, Ford and a few others.
The road safety and concerns for security control is the reason why autonomous vehicles are being prioritized. This gives robotaxis another market advantage as they are fueled by cameras and sensors, ensuring no risks are taken. These factors ensure the rise of share value for the robotaxi market.

Who is working on Robotaxis beside these giant players?
There are other competitors in the market working on the same venture for sure. Autonomous transportation service in the form of robotaxi has become a race between players in the industry. Hyundai, Cruise, Yandex, Didi, Baidu and others are some companies working on the idea. All companies are progressing quickly, with most of them heavily relying on the Nvidia chips. It is one side to develop an autonomous car capable of driving itself, however, it is totally different from being able to deploy it immediately. The complications involved in this matter are grave, and Tesla might be thinking way over its capabilities. Once they are ready, they most likely face regulatory challenges from authorities that will not allow an act of such high risk. Moreover, the are severe challenges in relevance to insurance regularities as who takes blame in the event of an accident.

“We are ten years out before we see fleets of robotaxis. They ain’t coming anytime soon, even with the most advanced sensing systems in the world”, said the Lucid’s CEO, Rawilson.

Resources:
Robotaxi fleets
Market size
SAE Level 5
Autonomy Day

One thought on “Autonomous transport future is not arriving soon

  1. 46377 says:

    Hey, here’s a very interesting resource: https://itsworldcongress.com/congress-topics/
    it’s basically a program of a transportation conference in Hamburg, 2021

    Platooning of trucks sounds rather feasible – one driver and 3 trucks, gets all the better with multiple cameras. Can be applied before reaching level 5 autonomy.

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