Waymo wants to reach one million weekly paid rides this year. WeRide crossed the 1,000 robotaxi milestone this year. Tesla's Robotaxi project continues to rack up miles. Uber and Zoox are partnering, while Uber is working on its own self-driving project with Nuro and Lucid. Nuro itself is testing in Japan, while the UK-based Wayve recently raised a massive round.
It's self-driving season, and we're deep into the early stages of commercializing a technology that, for too long, felt just out of reach.
But if you don't live in San Francisco, the American sun belt, or leading cities in the MENA region or China, self-driving may still seem very, very far away. Why aren't more self-driving companies in more markets today? Fleet management giant Moove's Ming Maa explained during a recent episode of TWiST:
Don't despair. While Maa is correct that there are a host of issues to sort out, momentum in the self-driving business -- thanks to both early, and strong customer demand alongside massive capital availability -- should carry it forward even with every city managing to throw up its own nuances and edge cases to thwart autonomy. (Co-panelist Nathan Parker's company, Edge Case, will help ensure that the safety questions required to add new cities are sorted.)
What should startups make of the autonomous market? Apart from the founders building self-driving businesses directly (think Waabi, say), rising self-driving taxi and delivery volumes will unlock new commercial opportunities as they reach new markets.
Autolane's Ben Seidl's focus on autonomous commerce is one such effort; when there are fleets of self-driving cars and trucks zipping around our cities carrying goods and passengers, you'll need a way to manage those vehicles at their commercial endpoints. Autolane wants to provide that infrastructure.
But think further. Once we have self-driving, electric transport on tap, companies will be able to deliver smaller, lower-cost items more easily. Passengers of self-driving cars will want to request a specific type of vehicle in advance, stocked with the land equivalent of a private jet's lading before takeoff. In-car advertising will be a big business, as will offering vehicles that can keep goods cold while in transit (the car iteration of reefer ships). The list goes on.
What our self-driving panel left us with was a clear picture of an industry that is reaching its stride; not all problems have been solved, and getting enough autonomous vehicles onto the road will require a staggering amount of additional capital. But where we're going is clear. And that means founders who want to be ahead of the curve can, and perhaps even should, start building for our self-driven future now.