The Guardian recently ran a piece entitled, “Self-driving cars: safe, reliable — but a challenging sell for Google“:

The strongest case for self-driving cars is safety, its logical, programmed movement also means vehicles can be centrally controlled, rerouting traffic away from congestion. Since the project started in 2009, Google has driven most of its 1.2m hours of tests in a small fleet of customised Lexus autonomous cars. As of July this year, there had been 14 accidents but all had been caused by human error, not by the software. Around 33,000 people die in traffic accidents in the US every year; Google says self-driving cars will reduce that number significantly. The opportunities are, indisputably, immense.

The hard sell for Google will be winning over generations of people who feel safer being in control of their vehicle, don’t know or care enough about the technology, or who simply enjoy driving. Yet most people who try a demo say the same thing: how quickly the self-driving car feels normal, and safe. As the head of public policy quipped, “perhaps we just need to do demos for 7 billion people”. Google’s systems engineer Jaime Waydo helped put self-driving cars on Mars while she worked at Nasa; it may well be that regulation and public policy prove easier there than on Earth.

I think the article gets the sale wrong. While safety may be important for regulators, I am doubtful that it will be an important sell for consumers, at least initially.

Early adopters tend to be people who have an overwhelming interest in technology, or a strong need for the product to solve a specific pain point. Safety is rarely a pain point until it’s too late.

I think the strongest case for self-driving cars will be helping people who place a lot of value on mobility but either cannot drive or place a high negative value on the act of driving. That will be caregivers, companies that don’t want to pay drivers, and commuters.

And that’s a pretty huge market.

Originally published at www.davidincalifornia.com on October 6, 2015.

In the past few days I’ve seen predictions that we will have self-driving cars by October, 3 years, 5 years, and probably a few more dates.

The question depends on what we mean by “self-driving”.

Elon Musk was just reported to have predicted fully-autonomous cars in 3 years, although in the quote he hedges a little bit, “My guess for when we’ll have full autonomy is about three years, approximately three years.”

Another interesting question is how widespread driving autonomy will be, when it launches.

Both the iPhone and the fully electric car, for example, were luxury goods when they launched, but decidedly mass-market luxury goods. Not $100,000 toys that only the super-rich could afford.

Tesla, however, has yet produce to a mass-market luxury vehicle (let’s define that as a car in the $40,000 range). So far, Tesla’s strategy has worked, and it has moved steadily down-market from the $100,000+ Roadster. But it will be interesting to see where driving autonomy hits on the price scale.

Originally published at www.davidincalifornia.com on September 28, 2015.

USA Today ran an article entitled, “Autonomous car future will demand tech company and automaker collaboration”.

Amusingly, the text of the article does not mention any such collaboration, or why the future will demand it.

Still, it’s worth thinking about the friend and foe relationships.

A helpful analogy is to the mobile phone industry.

On the Android side, the software itself is owned by Google, but the phone manufacturers are separate entities, who try to add value through a combination of superior hardware, distribution, pricing, and some proprietary software.

On the iPhone side, almost everything is branded and owned by Apple, except for the manufacturing, which is done by a variety of largely-anonymous Asian firms. Perhaps the most famous of these is Foxconn.

Dieter Zetsche, the CEO of Daimler, recently said, “We do not plan to become the Foxconn of Apple.”

How do they feel about becoming the Samsung of Google?

Originally published at www.davidincalifornia.com on September 24, 2015.

Clearpath Robotics just announced the name of an autonomous vehicle whose sole purpose is to move inventory around warehouses.

I am curious whether we will see a lot more of this, and whether these more focused efforts will launch faster than more generalized autonomous vehicles.

Lots of industries have specific purposes for autonomous vehicles — shipping, manufacturing, agriculture, defense, aviation. And presumably it is easier to develop automation within the more narrow confines of a niche industry.

Against that, there is the weight of the auto industry — both incumbents and new entrants — who see an enormous market for self-driving cars.

My guess is that we will see the industries develop in parallel, with successful innovations from one field being cross-purposed in other fields. That warms my heart and makes me thing that self-driving cars are coming even faster.

Originally published at www.davidincalifornia.com on September 23, 2015.