Google, Uber, Lyft, Ford, and Volvo Launch Driverless Car Advocacy Coalition

The Self-Driving Coalition for Safer Streets was recently announced, aimed at urging the federal US government to ramp up its efforts to bring driverless cars to market. Former NHTSA head David Strickland will be the coalition’s counsel and spokesman. Strickland previously advised Google on driverless vehicle matters. Statements made by various coalition members included:

“...work with lawmakers, regulators and the public to realize the safety and societal benefits of self-driving vehicles."

“...not just a lobbying initiative but a full policy and messaging campaign and movement."

“...driverless vehicles need to be deployed without taking shortcuts on safety.”

"...work together to advocate for policy solutions that will support the deployment of fully autonomous vehicles."

"...work with civic organizations, municipalities and businesses to bring the vision of self-driving vehicles to America’s roads and highways."

Clearly, this will put further pressure on NHTSA to take the lead in proposing a national framework to address the increasing number of disparate approaches on a state level, with a patchwork of autonomous vehicle regulations.

The very constitution of the coalition shows the critical importance of self-driving vehicles for an increasingly wider set of players, with car OEMs cooperating shoulder-to-shoulder with ridesharing and Internet players. GM is indirectly involved through their investment in Lyft.

Most remarkably, Uber and Lyft seem to be very serious about driverless technology. Uber already works closely with Carnegie Mellon on exploring and testing autonomous vehicles. Lyft can tap into GM’s efforts in automation as well as leverage investor Didi-Kuaidi’s global scale. Clearly, leading ridesharing brands acknowledge the relevance of driverless technology in order to take ridesharing to the next level of shared driverless cars, a.k.a., "robotic taxis," removing the dependence on human drivers and allowing scaling the “Transportation as a Service” paradigm into a mainstream phenomenon. They all very well realize ridesharing is just an intermediate step, ultimately limited by the number of available drivers, representing a fundamental barrier for longer-term expansion.

But the Internet players are not staying behind. In China, Uber is backed by search engine leader Baidu, which, in turn, has ramped up its own efforts in autonomous vehicle technologies. Their perspective is slightly different, looking for synergies with vehicle data crowd-sourcing capabilities fueling next-generation Internet services. But they are certainly also looking very hard at the new car-sharing economy.

Clearly, the stakes are high when it comes down to making driverless vehicles a reality. 

Car OEM coalition members Ford and Volvo are both involved in testing autonomous cars but from different perspectives. As premium car OEM, owned by Chinese Geely, Volvo is determined to be one of the leaders in driverless technology, but maybe less so from a car-sharing enabling perspective, though this could be different in China, where driverless car sharing might represent an even bigger opportunity compared with other regions.

On the other hand, mass-market car OEM Ford aims at bringing ADAS, autonomous and driverless technology to the wider public, as reiterated by CEO Shields at several events in the past year. Ford wants to stick to its heritage and DNA of democratizing transportation technology. At the same time, it is certainly also one of the car OEMs most committed to supporting the smart mobility paradigms of the future, ranging from electrification and multimodal to car sharing.

Interestingly, Ford finds itself next to Google in the coalition to further the cause of driverless technology. Only recently, Ford was rumored to be in partnership talks with Google on driverless technology cooperation. Is this a first public appearance of future collaboration? In any case, they certainly don’t seem to have an issue with sharing concerns about the uptake, and promoting the arrival of, driverless vehicles together with the Internet giant, unlike many/most of its competitors; especially German premium OEMs which only recently reiterated their refusal to work with Google (and Apple). On the other hand, FCA has been rumored to be in talks with Google followed by the recent announcement by Google to add  100 new 2017 Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid minivans to its driverless vehicle testing program. This partnership clearly goes further than anything that has been seen before, as described by Google: “This collaboration with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) is the first time we’ve worked directly with an automaker to create our vehicles. FCA will design the minivans so it’s easy for us to install our self-driving systems, including the computers that hold our self-driving software, and the sensors that enable our software to see what’s on the road around the vehicle...” At the same time, this is still about adapting an existing vehicle model, falling short of designing a driverless vehicle from scratch with FCA. For FCA, a partnership with Google is probably the best way for them to close their significant innovation deficit in terms of ADAS and autonomous vehicle development.

In any case, maybe we can start to see a pattern here. While the divide between Google and premium car brands remains huge, high-volume mass-market brands could well turn out to be Google’s sweet spot.