In January, GM announced its Cruise Origin as a vehicle that’s designed to be shared, autonomous and electric. Origin is the General Motors vehicle to be used primarily in transportation-as-a-service business solutions. Not to be left behind, today, Waymo and Volvo announced a partnership to build self-driving vehicles according to Automotive News (subscription required). It seems the Waymo-Volvo car will be a ride-hailing, TaaS vehicle like GM’s Cruise Origin. Remember, Volvo is owned by China’s Geely Holding Group. And as I’ve written in the past, Geely and its billionaire founder (Li Shufu), are aggressively investing in the future of automotive. Of course Google’s Waymo subsidiary has been developing self-driving solutions for many years.
I believe the development of TaaS is now a three-company/partnership race for first place: General Motors, Tesla, and now Waymo-Volvo. Maybe Volkswagen with their growing partnership with Ford, along with Hyundai are battling for second place. But GM, Tesla, and Waymo seem to be much further ahead than others.
Note: I recently wrote an extensive piece on Tesla’s “Insurmountable Advantages”, which includes information about their unorthodox approach to autonomous vehicle development.
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