Coming Soon (2018): The $200k Robo-Taxi
Junko Yoshida
2/21/2018 12:01 PM EST
7 comments
MADISON, Wis. — It’s official. Commercial robotic cars (that are no longer test cars) will hit the road in 2018, not — as previously predicted — two or three years from now.
The headless driver in front of you will no longer be just a little old lady.
Supply chain intelligence collected by Yole Développement, combined with Waymo’s recent acknowledgement that it will launch a ride-hailing service in Arizona in 2018, point to the conclusion that the commercial future of robotic vehicles is already upon us.
Waymo in Arizona (Source: Waymo)
For observers of the autonomous vehicle market in the U.S., the first domino was the state of Arizona last month granting Waymo a permit to operate as a transportation network company. Earlier this month, Waymo confirmed its plan to start charging customers for robo-taxi rides in 2018. But well before this year, Yole Développement, a Lyon, France-based market and technology research company, was already picking up information that fleet operators and carmakers are placing sizable orders on very high-end sensors. This suggested strongly that a rollout of commercial robotic vehicle services is imminent.
EE Times sat down with Yole Développement and asked about the firm’s analysis on the evolution of the robotic vehicle market, and market drivers for such highly automated vehicles. We also asked the estimated cost for a robotic vehicle today, and the likely number of robocars that might hit the commercial market in 2018-2019. We also asked Yole to break down robotic vehicle economics.
‘Cognitive dissonance’
Yole is a technology/business market research firm best known for its ability to dissect, understand and assess such emerging technologies as MEMS and sensors and their markets.
Unlike conventional automotive research firms, Yole’s focus is not on cars as finished systems and tallying up annual auto shipments. Yole’s strength is in sizing up the emerging market from a component level.
The research firm has been looking at the robotic vehicle market for a while. Over the past 12 months, Yole has published separate reports on topics such as 3D sensing, automotive sensors, automotive radars and high-end inertial measurement units (IMUs). Pierre Cambou, Yole’s activity leader for imaging and sensors, told us, “It was right around the summer of 2017 when we began to see ‘cognitive dissonance’ in the [robotic vehicle] market place.”
continues at eetimes.com |
