The future of autonomous driving has arrived. The era of unmanned taxis and trucks will begin as early as 2020

Autonomous driving is not something that is out of reach. It is rapidly advancing and being commercialized. As science fiction writer William Gibson said: The future has already arrived, but it is unevenly distributed.

Recently, Daimler and Bosch announced a partnership with Nvidia to develop autonomous driving. The alliance between Bosch, Daimler and Nvidia has a very clear goal, which is to develop self-driving taxis. According to the plan, in the second half of next year, the alliance will have its own self-driving taxi test fleet landed in California.

Daimler, Bosch and Nvidia are not very fast in their moves, as others have already taken the lead in the self-driving taxi business.

As early as November last year, Waymo, a subsidiary of Google, achieved autonomous driving without a safety officer. Recently, Waymo purchased 62,000 Chrysler Pacifica vehicles in large quantities to test scenarios such as self-driving taxis.

Waymo announced that it will commercialize its driverless taxi business this year.

GM Cruise's self-driving taxis have been tested in San Francisco since 2016. However, GM Cruise's self-driving taxis still require safety drivers. Next year, GM Cruise's self-driving taxis will also be officially put into use.

Why are taxis the first to use autonomous driving in commercial applications?

Overall, there are two main reasons that limit the development of autonomous driving. One is that the technology still needs to be broken through, and the other is that the high cost makes it difficult to commercialize autonomous driving. At present, autonomous driving cars are still too expensive. If they are applied to private cars, considering the low utilization rate, it is really not worth it. The utilization rate of taxis is much higher than that of private cars.

Self-driving taxis mean that drivers are no longer needed. Cars do not get tired like humans do. Except for the time to charge, self-driving taxis can work almost non-stop. Compared with family cars, the marginal cost of self-driving taxis is lower.

Compared with traditional taxis, autonomous driving is more efficient in terms of both pick-up time and vehicle use. The high vehicle efficiency will significantly reduce the cost per user. This makes the market prospects of autonomous taxis very promising.

In the traditional taxi industry, the labor cost of drivers can reach 50% to 70% of the total cost. The high labor cost has forced online car-hailing companies such as Uber and Didi Chuxing to step up their layout of driverless taxi business.

Moreover, autonomous driving will inevitably be combined with new energy vehicles in the future. The operating cost of electric vehicles is much lower than that of traditional internal combustion vehicles. If oil prices rise in the future, the price advantage of autonomous taxis will be further expanded.

The actual commercial use of self-driving taxis will start from fixed routes, which will greatly reduce the technical difficulty of implementation. Not only for technical considerations, fixed routes will make self-driving taxis safer, which is conducive to operators to steadily expand their business.

Once self-driving taxis are put into commercial operation, their development speed will be further accelerated. This is because self-driving taxis will be able to accumulate data more conveniently and conduct scene learning, thereby gradually improving their ability to adapt to various road conditions. This will also prepare for self-driving taxis to further expand their application scenarios and break through the limitations of fixed routes.

The commercial use of self-driving taxis can help operating companies accumulate more experience and help them further understand the local traffic environment, thereby improving their dispatching and operating capabilities.

The realization of commercial use also means the return of funds. As we all know, the research and development of autonomous driving is very expensive. Commercial use will enable the platform to obtain additional funds to support the next step of research and development.

In addition, the commercialization of self-driving taxis will further increase the public's acceptance of autonomous driving.

Self-driving taxis will provide a public self-driving experience, and the public's previous doubts will be gradually eliminated in practical applications.

Also close to commercial use is unmanned long-distance freight transport.

In China’s long-distance trucking industry, driver labor costs can account for 30-40% of total costs; in the United States, it can account for 50%.

The accident rate of long-distance freight is high, and most of them are caused by human factors such as drivers using mobile phones and driving while fatigued. The long-distance freight industry has high requirements for driver qualifications and high workload, and drivers who meet the requirements are relatively scarce.

The road conditions in the long-distance freight industry are mostly relatively simple and closed highways, and the implementation of autonomous driving is relatively less difficult than in urban traffic.

Currently, a company in China has received investment from NVIDIA to develop L4 autonomous driving technology mainly for highway and port container transportation scenarios. It plans to conduct large-scale road tests and commercial trial operations in 2019 and achieve full commercialization in 2020.

Who will benefit from self-driving taxis?

At present, it seems that the application of autonomous driving in commercial scenarios has a considerable advantage over private scenarios. Whether it is taxis or long-distance freight, application scenarios with relatively simple traffic environments and relatively fixed routes provide the possibility for the early commercialization of autonomous driving.

For autonomous driving, the first movers will have many advantages. The advantages accumulated by the winners in data, technology, and algorithms will be further consolidated in the future as commercial applications are realized, which also forces autonomous driving companies to speed up their layout even though the profit margins are small in the early stage.

With the increasing development of the automobile industry, the threshold for owning a car is constantly lowering. However, China is a country with a large population and limited road resources. It is impossible for every Chinese person to own a car. The sharing economy such as taxis or time-sharing rentals will become more and more common.

The development of the car-sharing economy will undoubtedly impact the private car market, and car manufacturers will also be indirectly affected.

A research report from the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute shows that when driverless cars become popular, the number of private cars will drop by 43%.

With the increasing maturity of autonomous driving technology and people's growing welcome to the sharing economy, the shrinkage of the private car market is inevitable.

However, the shrinking of the private car market does not mean that the entire automobile market will shrink as well. When people use private cars less, it will promote the prosperity of the self-driving taxi service industry.

There are a large number of private cars, but they are idle most of the time, so their service life is more than 10 years. In the sharing economy, self-driving cars will be fully utilized, and their lifespan will be significantly shortened.

The faster update of shared cars is expected to make up for the loss of private cars. Many traditional car companies have already noticed this change. General Motors, Nissan, Daimler and other traditional car companies have begun to build their own taxi fleets and enter the travel service market.

The implementation of self-driving taxis in the future will undoubtedly accelerate this process. Traditional car companies that are well prepared will not only not suffer from the reduction of private cars, but may also gain more profits through travel services.

Recently, BMW and Great Wall Motors established a joint venture to produce MINI series new energy vehicles in China, aiming at China's future travel service market. In the future, the biggest customers of car companies may not be private car owners, but taxi operators.

The implementation of self-driving taxis will benefit many parties, and the biggest beneficiaries will likely be self-driving platform providers such as Google, GM, and Baidu.

In addition to these platform providers, data service providers can also make considerable profits.

Self-driving taxis will rely heavily on human-machine interaction, with voice interaction as the main form. Amazon's Alexa, Apple's Siri, and Google's Assistant are expected to be connected to self-driving vehicles and share the pie. Banma Zhixing, a subsidiary of Alibaba in China, has also launched the Banma voice interaction system.

Voice interaction can not only undertake the task of human-computer interaction, but also be connected with many service scenarios beyond travel, which contains a very broad commercial space.

Providers of high-precision maps, such as Google, Apple, and Baidu, will also benefit from this. In fact, the reserve of high-precision maps is likely to directly determine the actual application scope of autonomous driving.

Operators represented by Uber, Lyft, and Didi will gain a considerable advantage in the layout of self-driving taxis. These operating platforms have large fleets and have accumulated a large amount of data before the advent of driverless taxis. In addition, the matching capabilities between routes, vehicles, and passengers of these operating platforms are also difficult for other companies to possess.

In the next few years, more and more companies will participate in the commercialization of self-driving taxis. Car manufacturers, parts companies, self-driving companies, operation service providers, and data service providers will all participate in the competition and distribution of this new pie.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.