Why the Google Car will disrupt your industry.
Yes, yours too.
“By 2020, nobody shall be seriously injured or killed in a new Volvo.”
Nobody. According to the Vision 2020 program of the car manufacturer, that is. Exactly 10 days before the Google driverless car prototype was revealed, Volvo declared in an interview it is aiming for autonomous driving Volvos by 2017 as part of their ambition of becoming completely crash-free.
It seems like a car you would want to drive, it is a mission you could hardly disagree with. On the contrary. It is most probably the reason I drive a Volvo today and drove one before. And they are far ahead on competition. It is about matching today’s technology and driver’s behaviour. Volvo understood very well at the start of their — at the time — bold statement that to make cars crash-free it is about making up for human errors. And Volvo does that with all its current efforts: alerting when you are driving too close to the vehicle in front of you, first with a dimmed light, later with sound. When coming too close, brake pads are put closer to the rotor for faster impact on the slightest driver reaction, winning about half a second and avoiding a possible collision. A beautiful philosophy and a clear advantage over the competition that is aiming for autonomous cars, putting their efforts on technology. Period. Without the proper driver understanding knowing that — according to Volvo — driver behavior is a contributing factor in more than 90% of all accidents. Autonomous vehicles is what could mean a major leap in their vision, as human error can be completely avoided. Driverless cars are far from new. Since 2004 the DARPA Grand Challenge tests autonomous cars in a desert race. None of the cars finished the 240 km race that year, but in 2005 some did. Mostly University teams. Audi, one of the first car manufacturers, has been conducting autonomous car experiments for years, driving up Pikes Peak, a curvey road to the top of the Pikes Peak mountain top. That was 2010. Much has evolved but Volvo still takes the cake. With their interview, they are raising the bar for safety & overall car manufacturing once again.
And the reason is the way they dare to think different. Although they are an incumbent, they have a challenger mindset. I’ll make this more tangible: in a paper about some Volvo research in the field of biomimicry, the authors discuss the problem with collision avoidance mechanisms. There is a huge amount of information processing required to determine if a collision will actually occur. It involves very complex calculations of trajectories, speeds, and many other characteristics. One day, Martti Soininen, engineer at Volvo, saw a scientific article about research on locusts. Locusts are small little insects that move in swarms and have the ability to avoid collisions with each other, although swarming with thousands together. As it appears, locusts have a large neuron called the locust giant movement detector (LGMD) that releases bursts of energy whenever a locust is about to collide with another locust. The LGMD releases more energy when something is coming directly at the locust prompting the locusts to take evasive action. Volvo was the first to move these insights into action in cars. Hence the example of a red warning light mentioned above.
One could easily argue that Volvo has an open mind, a challenger mindset, when it comes to thinking about safety, going beyond typical safety research.
But all this was 10 days before Google presented their prototype to the world and by doing so, beating Volvo’s best effort. But not just marginally. Comparable to how Dick Fosbury baffled the world with his flop-technique leaving all previous techniques for the high jump miles behind. His technique is now the most used (and almost only remaining) technique today. Ironically or not, but Mazda made a commercial last year with the flop as an example of a “game changer”, just like their — well — ordinary car.
What is so unique then with the Google car?
It’s not their vision, as they share the same mission “to save lives and reduce traffic accidents”. In 2011 Sebastian Thrun said on his TED talk that he was “really looking forward to a time generations after us look back at us and say how ridiculous it was that humans were driving cars”. But their vision is broader than avoiding collision, it is about turning every un-used car to use, about solving mobility problems, about new business models that will thrive (in contrast with selling cars to drivers), about a better world.
Google understands the signs, the dots. They understand that people don’t need to own stuff anymore, but they need to be able to use a car when needed, they understand our mobility pains and our need for spare time, ... Google uses smart technology — just like Volvo and in the years to come any other car manufacturer will — but it connects it with a vision of the changed world. And that is why Google has the potential to disrupt not just the car manufacturers industry, but many industries and with that, the world.
Car manufacturers will be selling their own autonomous cars and brand them like they do their regular cars today. But the real impact is not just better cars. Google is not just disrupting Volvo, Audi and the like. Google is currently operating on the car S-curve, turning regular cars in autonomous cars. But knowing Google the understand that their technology impact goes beyond the standard theory S-curves. It is a disrupting force, not on the “impact map” of your industry. But it will be.
As Clayton Christensen, author of the “The Innovator’s Dilemma” puts it:
“Disruptive technologies don’t follow the standard S-curve because they start their life cycle in a different market than the one in which they will generate the most profits”.
That is why it will be such a disrupting innovation. The fact that it is Google who got all the press & media attention in favour of Volvo, is because we expect that Google will go not one step, but rather one mile further.
Some ideas on how this could impact industries beyond car manufacturing:
To start on the positive side: think of government administrations that no longer need to run “no drinking & driving” campaigns, nor does it need to process collision forms. Insurers will be providing their services no longer to individuals as their cars are sold with a “no crashing” guarantee, but to Google, Volvo and the like. Carglass and other car repair companies will be out of business, although Carglass can still repair cranks, the low value market they grew themselves. Roads will look different as there is no more need for traffic lights, night lightning or road signage. The fact that roads are bi-directional with separated lanes could even be a thing of the past as autonomous cars can drive collision free on crossroads. Tank stations will change to charging stations for automated vehicles that drive there before or after leaving you where you needed to go (comparable to your Robomow at home). The thousands of stops with mini shops & restaurants will disappear. The rental car industry will be fully automated, Uber — the disruptor of the taxi industry — will be disrupted by the Google Car as cars will be driving us, not people owning cars. Transportation and logistics companies will be driving 24/7 (or maybe only at night) in convoys, local transport companies might be no longer needed as cars can pick up packages and return goods when required (the revenue booster Zalando was waiting for). As people will no longer own cars nor park them, construction of houses, parkings (RIP) and other car-related premises will change dramatically. Fair organisations will start their fairs not at the venue, but at your home, when a fair-sponsored autonomous car picks you up and offers you the time for a personalized preparation of your fair visit in an interactive Google car (probably sending all the data to your Google Glass). Dating sites might offer additional services renting out limo-styled Google Cars to impress your date. It will impact how we work, with huge benefits for sales people driving around the country but at least being able to take care of their administration in their commuter-themed Google cars instead of that one day a week at the office.
Now remember the paragraph about Volvo reaching out to biomimicry to solve the collision problem. No matter how far they dare to think outside their comfort zone, no matter how challenging their mindset is — to some extent—, when it comes to a business model, they suffer the disease most incumbents face: they can but think inside the boundaries they always knew, having a hard time connecting the dots that emerged. Although there are plenty of experiments that are signs of car manufacturers (are willing to) become a mobility provider rather than a car provider, they will continue trying to sell cars to citizens. But Google forces us to think beyond what we know today, beyond selling cars. Way beyond.
I still like driving my Volvo. But as soon as I can leave driving from the previous sentence, I might opt for a Google car. Or no car at all and bet the money I save on one of the startup companies that will change our future forever.
@bartmuskala is Founder of True North, a marketing innovation hub, helping companies of today mark tomorrow by infusing a challenger mindset. A requirement if companies of today want to stay relevant in the world of tomorrow.
