March 15, 2019—A new study revealed that partnerships are essential to the development of autonomous vehicles. According to a report by DesignNews, a recent survey covering Automated Driving Vehicles Leaderboard from Navigant Research revealed that company partnerships are important in order for autonomous vehicles to move forward.
“With the exception of Tesla, automakers are recognizing that it’s going to take longer than they thought to get this technology really robust and widely deployed,” Sam Abuelsamid, principal analyst and leader of the Navigant study said to DesignNews. “The development costs are high and the near-term returns are going to be lower than what they expected two or three years ago. So they’re trying to figure out, ‘How can we spread out our costs and get more scale while we make sure this technology is going to work?’”
According to DesignNews, the study found Waymo LLC to be the autonomous vehicle leader, based off of technical strategy and execution. In addition, GM Cruise and Ford Autonomous Vehicles followed shortly after. Others that received high schools were Aptiv, Intel-Mobileye, Volkswagon Group, and Daimler-Bosch, DesignNews reports.
Companies were ranked on ten aspects: strategic vision, go-to-market planning, technology, production strategy, sales and marketing, product capability, product quality, product portfolio, staying power, and partnerships.
According to DesignNews, the study found that Waymo had formed a number of partnerships with several companies including Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, Jaguar Land Rover, Walmart and Avis. Additionally, GM had partnerships with Softbank, Honda, and Doordash.
Abuelsamid told DesignNews that partnerships would not only spread manufacturers cost and add technology development.
“If one algorithm is not recognizing a person standing on the curb, and another one is recognizing it, then you know there’s an issue that has to be addressed,” Abuelsamid said to DesignNews. “Partnerships allow them to combine what they’re doing, without having to develop a separate software stack to run against the primary one.”
