2019 drove home the difficulties of the automated driving (AD) sector, with several startups closing their doors and larger players consolidating their efforts. To ensure public and regulator sentiment does not weaken, AD large-scale deployment is sliding to the mid 2020’s.
This information comes from a Navigant research report called Navigant Research Leaderboard: Automated Driving Vehicles. The companies are ranked based on ten criteria including their technology, sales, product portfolios, and their vision. The report evaluated 18 of the AD sector’s companies examining execution and strategies, with the end result of naming Waymo, Ford Autonomous Vehicles, Cruise, and Baidu as the top four.
The Report also predicts further consolidation within the industry, with companies aiming for economies of scale on their investment through combining with partners. Throughout the industry, technical teams continue iterating the core technology behind AD, while companies are focusing on ways to achieve commercially viable business models. Self-driving trucks are now being tested in 17 states.
Sam Abuelsamid, a principal research analyst with Navigant Research, mentioned that the top four companies also have plans for automated mobility services based on the technology. He continues, “These four companies are already well along in terms of the development of the core AD systems technology and have accumulated several years of real-world development and validation.”
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