An executive with whom I spoke this week, of which I am not going to give the name, of the future of autonomous driving and of the inclusion of artificial intelligence in the car, and of entertainment content, and advertising, pointed out something to me That may sound like a joke right now, but it would not be unreasonable if it happened in the not too distant future: “one or perhaps more than one automotive brand will disappear if Google is able to hit the mark and succeed with its autonomous car. Or rather if it is capable of taking its current business model, personalized advertising, to the connected car without a driver ”.
But not only Google, or rather Alphabet, its Corporation, if it succeeds with its Waymo project to bring its software and autonomous driving system to cars. If Google is right with Waymo. If Uber also does it with its project for the car of the future. Or Apple with his, Titan, about which so little is known. Or if Tesla manages to monetize its technological leadership and partnership with NVIDIA so that its DriveX bet wins. If all, or some, manage to bring their current business projects and ecosystems to fruition, and a brand has not taken the right path in time, the history of Nokia, but this time in the automotive world, would repeat itself .
But in this article we are going to be more specific, and we are going to talk about one of the proposals on the market, which recently managed to accumulate headlines in its favor: Waymo’s association with Jaguar Land Rover to develop the first vehicle. luxury electric autonomous.
In the information that both companies used to communicate the agreement, it was stated verbatim: “Jaguar Land Rover and Waymo will work together in the design and development of Premium autonomous vehicles based on the new Jaguar I-PACE. This long-term strategic collaboration will allow both companies to share the same goal: to make cars safer, to free up more free time for the public to increase the balance between professional and leisure activities and to improve individual mobility ”.
“This is why Google is so interested in bringing its ecosystem to the connected and autonomous vehicle,” say analysts. The average daily trips to the United States have increased from approximately 25 minutes in 2009 to an average of 26.4 minutes in 2017. And according to the consulting firm BI Intelligence, it will increase to around 28.3 minutes by 2025. Although such increases are minimal by themselves, in Altogether the impact could be enormous.
In the United States, there were about 139 million people who commuted daily by car (the latest year for which data is available), which means that there will be 900 million more minutes per day of commuting to work by 2025, according to estimates by BI Intelligence. That is equivalent to 3.7 billion additional hours of susceptible people time to consume content and advertising, and only in the United States. Figures that are surely known by both Google and the rest of the actors of projects similar to Waymo.
Jaguar I-PACE equipped with Waymo’s autonomous driving technology will begin testing later this year, according to the announcement by Google and Jaguar Land Rover. And road testing and real-time data collection will allow engineers from both companies to calibrate their technology for maximum safety and reliability. Up to 20,000 I-PACEs will be manufactured in the first two years of production and will be available to Waymo’s driverless vehicle service for around one million daily trips.
Jaguar Land Rover’s activity in the field of autonomous driving is important, and this week it explained that it will lead a project called AutopleX to develop a technology that allows ‘seeing’ at confluences of streets and through obstacles. Combining connectivity, automation and real-time navigation, the information will arrive live to the car without a driver, which will allow it to communicate with the rest of the vehicles in circulation and anticipate possible obstacles when there is no clear view of the road, thus helping effectively to cross streets and complicated roundabouts autonomously. AutopleX will develop the technology through simulations and tests on open roads both on motorways and in urban areas in the West Midlands.
