The Race to Driverless
The autonomous vehicles market is fast advancing. And there are endless speculations about which company will lead the way and commercialize its vehicles first. With billions of dollars at stake, no wonder the industry is pretty secretive, and manufacturers are keeping their plans under wraps.
But make no mistake. The driverless revolution is happening, and fast. And at SKYFchain, we’re excited to be at the forefront of this incredible innovative technology.
Just looking at the actual numbers is mind-blowing: By 2035, the annual value of the autonomous vehicle market will reach $77 billion, according to the Boston Consulting Group.
For example, in California alone — where it’s legal since April to test cars without a driver on public roads as of June 20, 2018, the State’s Department of Motor Vehicles had issued 56 Autonomous Vehicle Testing Permits, for companies including Volkswagen Group of America, Mercedes Benz, Toyota, Subaru, Ford, Honda, BMW, Baidoo, Qualcomm, Waymo, GM Cruise, Delphi Automotive, Tesla and Intel. (Full list here.)
In terms of autonomous vehicle adoption, it seems like the U.S. and China will lead the way, with the markets collectively accounting for nearly 65% of autonomous vehicles sold worldwide in 2019, according to a Juniper Research recent report.
We could go on forever talking about the advantages of autonomous vehicles, but let’s point out the essentials: a decrease in fuel consumption and insurance costs, less human-prone driving accidents and major environmental benefits. With that also comes also a slew of challenges, including consumer trust (the fatal crash involving a driverless car in Arizona affected consumer confidence) legal hurdles and of course technical challenges as the industry is in its infancy.
Another very key point, is that beyond driverless cars, this technological revolution also includes unmanned ships, trucks, planes and drones. And let’s also point out that their applications are boundless, whether it’s for cargo deliveries, emergency relief, construction, or for the oil or agribusiness sectors, to just name a few examples.
However, all of these applications are still human-centric. And this is where, we at SKYFchain step in. Thanks to our blockchain platform, cargo routes and autonomous cargo vehicles can exchange information. Concretely, it means that participants in the system will know exactly when a delivery is made and that payments will go through only if conditions of the delivery are met. The main purpose of SKYFchain is to integrate information for all market participants and organize the execution of smart-contracts for all transactions — payments, vehicles registrations, insurance and maintenance updates.
And what’s amazing is that when we created this blockchain program for our own SKYFdrones (read more about them in our previous post), we soon realized that this system should be available to all cargo vehicles and users because this is a program that everyone would want to use as it solves so many challenges, including efficiency.
The added beauty of what we do at SKYFchain is that it’s applicable to all major industries — including logistics in the oil and gas industry, marine logistics, emergency situations and forestry — which we are excited to discuss in more detail in a future post.
We are very thrilled about being at the forefront of this revolution and proud of offering such an innovative solution. Stay tuned for more!
