Please consider GM Aims for Self-Driving Taxi Fleet by 2019.
GM executives, speaking at an investor conference Thursday, said the company aims to run a large-scale fleet of driverless cars in big cities by 2019. GM is among the first major driverless-car developers to attach a timeline to the commercialization of autonomous vehicles, and the 109-year-old auto maker is racing big tech companies and Silicon Valley startups to lead the reinvention of the way people own and operate cars.
GM last year earned about a profit margin of 7.5% on its $166 billion in annual revenue from global car sales. Chief Financial Officer Chuck Stevens said that the company believes a driverless-car service by 2025 will offer 20% to 30% margins and a “total addressable market of several hundreds of billions of dollars.”
Ford Motor Co. has made similarly lofty margin projections related to mobility-related services in the past, but has offered far fewer details and stayed away from specific timetables.
Alphabet Inc.’s self-driving car effort, called Waymo, has outlined plans for a future autonomous-taxi service but hasn’t said when it would launch. It said this month that it would begin offering demonstration rides to members of the public without a safety operator behind the wheel, which goes against standard procedure in the industry.
Uber Technologies Inc. also has signaled plans for a sizable robotaxi fleet, saying it would order up to 24,000 Volvo SUVs to convert to autonomous vehicles in coming years, but it also hasn’t disclosed a timetable for commercial deployment.
Mr. Stevens said GM could offer rides for less than $1 a mile by 2025—down from around $2.50 for driver-based, ride-hailing services today. That could generate profit margins roughly quadruple the profitability of GM’s core car-making business, which generated $12.5 billion in operating profit last year.
By 2019?
I question 2019. It would require legislation that has not even begun. It would also require improvements to existing technology.
However, I have no doubts about a 2021-2022 timeframe.
It should be pretty clear at this point that all the deniers are delusional.
Can Uber Survive?
If GM, Ford, and Waymo offer taxi service, what exactly does Uber bring to the table and how can they compete?
Uber is in a huge legal dispute with Waymo (Google), a battle I expect Uber to lose. If so, it may have to pay royalties to Waymo, after purchasing cars from a manufacturer.
GM and Ford can obviously get cars cheaper than Uber.
OK. Uber has an app and drivers that use the app. But how long will it take for customers to switch to a GM, Ford, or Waymo app is someone else offers a better deal?
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
There is not ONE fully autonomous car driving around our cities yet. Not ONE. They are only on controlled test tracts and carefully monitored by someone ready to grab the wheel if they F up. I think fully autonomous cars are totally OVERHYPED. The world has never seen anything do anything this complex without a human watching over it. Even trains which only run down tracks (INFINITELY less complex than navigating cities, highways, etc…) have a human in the cockpit. It is one thing for the Internet to invented, or web phones, or GPS. But a car driving by itself navigating every single curve, every traffic circle, 4 way stops with no lights, swerving out of the way of debis in the road, etc….. I say fully autonomous is 20 yrs away minimum. Just one of those causes a 20 car pile up and deaths and the technology will be set back 5 yrs. Who will get sued? Also what if a terrorist puts a bomb in a autonomous vehicle and sends it to a school right when all the kids are leaving for the day? How do you prevent that?
Cool, guaranteed to happen in two years. Knew it all along.
We’ll see. I think self driving cars will be somewhat commonplace in 10 years. 5 years is too soon. There are too many hurdles and government regulations. Being involved in software development my whole life, it takes 50% of the time to get 90% done. The last 10% takes forever. I’m not even sure we’re at the 90% done mark yet.
Uber will not surfive. Unlike other automakers it relies on workers finance and maintain their money-making assets i.e. cars. Self driving cars wouldn’t come out as a customer expense. Instead it would be 100% Uber’s burden. Additionally it would have to hit support staff to maintain the new ecosystem. Way more upfront investment.
I can’t see either Uber surviving. I also can’t see GM surviving. Both cannot compete against the competition (China) as Uber doesn’t make cars and GM doesn’t make small cars. In 5 years I expect most new cars (in urban markets at least) to be driverless (and probably electric). The Chinese make cheap cars and cheap everything and once drivers are no longer physically driving they will become less attached to the idea that the car is an extension of themselves. They will just be people movers and won’t need all the expensive add ons that GM sells to car buyers at a nice margin. GM cannot survive just selling small base model cars for under 10 grand and the market for hailing driverless cars will go to the companies with the cheapest fares.
“Can Uber Survive?” Well, we can hope not.
Everyone wants to be the phone company. Build out a network, charge a flat fee that’s just a little cheaper than owning a vehicle and watch the growth. Then start ratcheting up the rates. Or not, but overbuild your vehicles’ drivetrain to last for decades, and then slowly redefine the product to your liking.
This all sounds great until you realize these things are going to be as spacious as United coach class and as comfortable as the city bus. And as clean as a New York subway on Sunday morning. Just add video screens blasting ads throughout the trip and you’ll have the dream vehicle.
In the last election we all learned that there is a wide political disparity between the major city and rural populations. This implies a disparity on where these populations are grouped on the socialism/individualism scales as well.
Given that, I think there will be a much larger conflict coming along when people in cities want to adopt a 100% autonomous vehicle society with ride sharing taken to the point where car ownership is essentially banned for safety sake and the hapless “rural hick” who wants to visit the Big City but can’t because he owns a, heaven forbid, fossil fuel burning manually operated car.
Combine this with the electric vs gasoline vehicles and you can really divide this nation further simply because electric cars are not practical in most rural settings and gasoline will be favored for a few more decades.
If we start pushing the social agenda of electric cars and autonomous vehicles on the nation, the rural population will be decimated. Are we prepared for that or even thinking about it?
Can Uber survive? Who knows. Can GM’s project survive? Waymo’s? It’s all about which one actually works best, isn’t it? We won’t know that until they actually debut.
Jon, if nothing else, there will always be free beer tomorrow. We’ve got that going for us.
I think driverless taxis will always only be 2 years away.
One trend I have observed the past decade is 17 to 20 year-olds not rushing to get their driver’s license. In my day, you began counting the days until your permit around age 12. I see driverless cars not only replacing taxis & Uber, but car-ownership itself pretty quickly. In 20 years, driving skills may be akin to hunting, fishing and (non-rudimentary) cooking skills. A subset of the population may always have them, but the average person will view those skills as an anachronism.