Business Case for AV
Where Are Robotaxis and Robovans Going?
Is There a Business Case for Robotaxis and AV Shuttles?
Car Culture Morphs into High-Tech Car Dependency
What Decades of Roboshuttle Misfires Teach Us
Where Are Robotaxis and Robovans Going?
By Egil Juliussen, PhD
What’s at stake?
The growth of ride-hailing services has made robotaxis the favorite opportunity for driverless vehicles. By comparison, fixed-route robovans have seen only moderate investments and limited startup activities. AVs for personal use have the most complex usage pattern and need much lower purchase prices. It’s instructive to take a closer look at key players, technology complexity, use cases, standards, regulations, AV hardware and software platforms in order to understand the lay of the land.
Is There a Business Case for Robotaxis and AV Shuttles?
What’s at stake?
The potential stakeholders in the emerging AV bus and taxi business are many, but thus far tech companies have driven the narrative, and a solid business case for robotaxis and roboshuttles has yet to be demonstrated. The good news is that robotaxi operators will have many knobs to turn as they fine-tune their operations. The bad news is it remains unclear how much fine-tuned market knowledge they already have. If they don’t have it yet, where they can get it?
Car Culture Morphs into High-Tech Car Dependency
What’s at stake?
The Ojo-Yoshida Report spoke with author Peter Norton to discuss his latest book, Autonorama: The Illusory Promise of High-Tech Driving. Norton, an associate professor of history in the Department of Engineering and Society at the University of Virginia, coined the term Autonorama as a “technofuturistic” label for decades-old auto industry marketing that now promises a driverless future. We’ve seen this show before, Norton argues, and, as in the past, it won’t deliver safe, sustainable “mobility solutions.” The author pulls no punches in documenting decades of unfulfilled auto industry promises, tracing the history of car dependency and its transition to high-tech car dependency, and offers recommendations for more efficiently transporting people to and from their destinations.
Here’s our conversation with the author Peter Norton.
What Decades of Roboshuttle Misfires Teach Us
What’s at stake?
If you’ve been convinced that autonomous vehicles are the future for transportation systems, take a hard look at the humble roboshuttle, an early proving ground for AV concepts. Highly automated buses and shuttles have been around for a couple of decades, but few of those deployments have made it past trials to become sustained commercial enterprises. The self-driving van’s boxy build and plodding pace often get the blame for the riding public’s indifference. Unless developers and municipalities start paying proper attention to transportation market fundamentals, however, it may be naïve to assume that robotaxis will fare any better. We believe the chronic malaise of the roboshuttle business holds lessons for the broader AV industry.