AV timelines at a glance(OEM)
A key indicator of the progress being made is the data of the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), which collects the number of autonomous miles driven by company, and also publishes the number of human interventions. On this metric, Waymo is by far the leader in terms of autonomous miles driven (5million miles as at February 2018), and also in terms of miles without human intervention. On top of that is the number of virtual miles driven through simulation. Again, Waymo leads with more than 5bn simulated miles – 2.7bn miles in 2017 alone. This is equivalent to 25,000 cars driving 24/7. However, many more real-world miles are required: BMW's CTO Klaus Froehlich thinks that 125m miles need to be driven to achieve a safe enough AV operating system.
Mobility service providers – Daimler is the most active OEM so far
Longer term, however, the service provider business model could evolve. Leading ride-on-demand 1.0 providers currently organise and 'own' the supply by acquiring drivers on their platform. In a robotaxi world, the supply of cars will likely be regionally concentrated in the hands of fewer big fleet operators. Uber, Lyft etc. could become 'consolidator' apps that match the supply from various fleet owners into one app. However, this job could also be done by Google Maps, for example. Integrated players owning the AV technology can exercise their negotiating power on ride-sharing platforms by threatening to establish their own competing app (i.e. similar to the direct booking initiatives by chain hotels). They could use externalapps as a means to optimise the asset utilisation, while generating the 'baseload' through an owned app.
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