We’ve been pre-programmed for self-driving cars since the 50's, but why is that exciting?
Whether we’re prepared for it or not, the future of mobility might mean removing ourselves from the labor of operating vehicles. That’s not profound, but what I recently realized during a heated recent debate with family, is that we’ve been groomed for robots to drive us for over half a century.
The concept of self driving cars is often met with disdain from automobile purists or dread by those who drive professionally. Self driving cars yet, is the future we can’t avoid. We can all agree that whenever automation handles our repetitive tasks, we benefit by living safer lives. We end up spending time focused on other things that matter, socially, and or professionally.
Why do I say we’ve been groomed?
Today, by law, all new passenger cars sold in the EU and in the US are required to implement an anti-lock braking system. We all take ABS for granted. It’s the system that allows the wheels on your car to remain on the road surface when you slam on your brakes. You don’t have to be a professional drifter anymore with cadence braking (what the old-timers refer to as “pump ya brakes”). To oversimplify what actually happens when you brake with ABS, you’re sending a signal to a robot to make the decision on how to apply the brakes so you don’t die. Yes, stepping on the brakes means a robot assesses speed, road conditions, and other factors then decides whether you live or you die. Robots have been a thing in cars since the 50’s from your brakes to cruise control and other technologies we take for granted today.
The point is, each passenger vehicle utilizes robots, so you can do human things like text and drive. I’m talking to you, we all know you do it, I see you on the road each morning.
We have all been been primed for this future, but then what happens when the inevitable happens and we don’t have to drive anymore? Will we even need to own a car in this future? This post, a brief look at autonomous vehicles in the ride hailing “Uber-like” world we live in today and how robotics soon fits into that world.
Getting a ride today means we don’t have to stand on the side of the road, arm extended with a thumb out. Companies like Alphabet are evolving how we get around. Alphabet for example has bet big since 2009, to solve not needing to drive with self-driving technology. Alphabet’s mission, like many in this industry, is to get everyone around easily and safely. Naturally, with tens of thousands of logged self-driving miles weekly, Google’s goal is to let the robots do the hard work so you can have fun or sleep during your commute.
We’ve been groomed to accept the benefits of avoiding repetitive tasks, it’s what makes us human. Amongst the many reasons why autonomous commute and services will benefit society I’d like to highlight three:
Reclaim Space
Imagine all the things that disappear when you don’t have to drive. The space dedicated to driveways, parking lots get reclaimed. It becomes exciting what we can do with this space. Centralized fleet services will emerge making auto repair shops irrelevant. That space can be used to make our environment more practical for humans and not cars. Above is a photo of the Brooklyn Bridge, proof that people will walk more if space is reclaimed. There are many examples of reclaimed space, another example is SF pier. These spaces are thereby rapidly adopted and heavily trafficked without vehicles.
Think about buildings dedicated to vehicles like parking spots; With the exception of NYC, more space is debited to “sleeping cars” than sleeping people in American cities. There are over a billion parking spaces in US. Many downtowns devote 50 to 60 percent of scarce real estate to vehicles.
Travel Safer & Cheaper
With the confluence of connected infrastructure, vehicle to vehicle communication, we are quickly approaching a world where an accident while driving nears a zero-probability event. A Virginia Tech study concluded that the national crash rate of 4.2 accidents per million miles is higher than the crash rate for self-driving cars (L3 autonomy), which is 3.2 crashes per million miles .
What’s more, one shared vehicle replaces eight automobiles. Once autonomous vehicle services becomes ubiquitous much more people will not buy cars.
More time for you
The time spent not waiting on the next car bumper watching it move an inch can be used to make us happier. We can entertain ourselves, increase our productivity, connect with each other, and live better lives.
What would you do with that time?
So what does connected transport look like in the coming months?
Self-driven hailing or taxi services will soon be a crowded market. This nascent industry will be led by incumbent ride hailing services like Lyft and Uber. Car companies like Toyota, Tesla, Diamler, and others will want a piece of the pie but it is the approach by startups I’m more excited about. Drafting behind Google’s 3.5 million-mile traction in the future of self-driven transport is a little known company called Voyage.
Voyage is an autonomous vehicle service from a team working to bring about the end-goal of self-driving cars: a world where anyone, anywhere can summon a car directly to their doorstep, travel safely to their destination, all for an “extremely low price”. They are claiming:
“a self driving Taxi service…for free!”
A bit about Voyage the company was Co-Founded in 2016 by former Udacity, Apple, Uber, and Google employees.
They have seen a bit of traction in 2017 with three deployed Voyage self-driving taxis in the San-Francisco, California region.
How do services like Voyage work?
Like with Lyft, you summon a Voyage self-driving car right to your doorstep with an app.
During your ride, you control your “Voyage” (AC, music etc.) right from the app, disconnect if you want because the car will take you directly right to your destination.
So if it’s free that means I’m the product right?
Well, yeah, I can’t imagine not but maybe that’s not all bad. My guess is that over time, it’s that fine tuned personalization during the time I spend not driving that provides me a more personalized and comfortable ride. This is the business in my view where Voyage sells user data from user personalization. Again, this is just my guess. This space will be very crowded very soon:
If I am right, the Voyage business model will be to address current user behavior trends in the market. Younger Americans for example find the cost of owning and operating their own vehicles less desirable. Legacy car manufacturers from Ford to GM’s Maven ride share service are exploring business models to solve problems within this trend.
As with our behavior around searching for goods on Amazon, users will no longer identify to model but a brand, and like Amazon, it will matter which brand we choose to transport us; the race is on.
This insight is evident in approaches like Voyage; in addition to having an intuitive first-user experience through an app, the core service is focused on user comfort, and entertainment while you ride, not whether the vehicle is a 6-cylinder or 8 as our parents use to obsess about.
From a business model standpoint, the future of self-driving services are looking to be like Boeing instead of BMW. What I mean by that is that Boeing business is to sell to United etc not the consumer. These car manufacturers will market to services like Voyage or their own autonomous ride service divisions and those services will cater to you and me.
What are the potential early pitfalls with the Voyage-style affordable transport strategy?
As a seasoned product lead, I’d like use a quick example at how I’d think through some of the issues with the known business models around self driving cars.
First there is the issue with user adoption. Autonomous transport is a nascent industry and as such consumers may not immediately not see the value, safety, freedom of affordable autonomous transport. Approaches include using free rides as a hook and innovating on how to deliver personalized content during the first ride.
My hypothesis is that gathering data on each user before the first ride will provide more comfort and options to entertain, inform, and make the first time user more productive while traveling.
As with most emerging mediums, we have a causality dilemma; Users won’t find use for the service if they don’t use the service and if they don’t use the service, they won’t find use for the service. It is important not just to educate but to nail that first experience for the consumer.
Though a car may look different on the outside, a car as a machine hasn’t changed much in a century. Think about how we changed our world around cars. We built highways, cities, we have evolved the entire way modern civilizations live around owning and using car.
Americans spend 30 billion hours collectively a year commuting and it’s killing us not just through car crashes, but for those with longer commutes, obesity, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, back and neck pain, divorce, even depression.
It’s easier to fear what we may lose with the advent of self driving cars, after-all, many American’s depend on driving for their livelihood. It is harder to imagine what new opportunities grow from in it’s wake, that’s why I’m excited. Perhaps being pre-programmed for a robot-driven future is not a bad thing after all.
All-hail our robot overlords.
Noble Ackerson is a Google Developers Expert for Product Strategy. This post expands upon a presentation he recently gave on the subject of Product Management in the world of emerging technologies. Link to the original slides
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