Self-driving car launch years

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siili_auto

6 min readOct 8, 2018

The first self-driving cars from Waymo will begin commercial service already in 2018 and many other brands will launch in 2019–2021. These shared, automated, electric vehicles will provide billions of people safer, cleaner, and more convenient mobility. So, it’s important to follow the estimated launch years of different car brands and technology platforms to be able to anticipate when the revolution truly hits us. I will analyze this spectacular disruption in other upcoming blog posts — in this one, the focus is on the timeline.

Waymo self-driving car in Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA

2018 — Waymo/FCA/Jaguar and Lyft/Aptiv, (Uber)

The Google Self-Driving Car Project (now called Waymo) started already in 2015 soon partnering with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA). Waymo’s self-driving fleet of 600 cars has driven more autonomous miles than any competitor. In fact, in October 2018 the fleet had driven over 10 million miles on public streets in 25 cities though the focus has been on the streets of Mountain View (CA), Austin (TX), Kirkland (WA), and Phoenix (AZ). It took 10 years to reach this milestone, but the next 10 million is expected to come already next year, because it was as recently as in August 2018 when the fleet crossed 9 million miles. Waymo launched early rider program for “hundreds of riders” in Phoenix in 2017. Now in 2018 Waymo started preparations for a commercial launch with two major announcements: 1) Making $1Bn deal with Jaguar Land Rover in March to deliver 20.000 electric cars able to provide 1 million rides per day and 2) Ordering 62.000 electric minivans from FCA in May, therefore, increasing the capacity to 4 million daily rides. Waymo plans to launch the service in Phoenix still in Q4/2018, next in San Francisco, and later on in other US-cities.

The ride-hailing company Lyft announced in August 2018 that its customers have paid for over 5.000 self-driving rides in Las Vegas using its mobile app. The service was launched in Las Vegas in January with 30 BMW cars, but the company has 75 cars in its fleet. Lyft is not developing the technology itself but has instead partnered with Aptiv (a spin-off from Delphi Automotive that acquired NuTonomy in 2017).

These two launches are even more impressive when compared with Lyft’s arch-rival Uber. Its fleet had completed 3 million self-driving miles but had to stop the tests after a fatal crash in Tempe (AZ) in early 2018.

2019 — GM’s Cruise Automation with Honda

Cruise Automation was founded in 2014 and acquired by General Motors (GM) in 2016. Since becoming part of GM, Cruise has been working exclusively on developing software for making GM’s Chevy Bolt electric vehicle fully autonomous. Cruise started to prepare for a gradual launch in 2019 and closed a $2,25Bn funding deal with SoftBank in May 2018 followed by $2,75Bn from Honda in October. These deals nicely illustrate the magnitude of the investments as well as the complex self-driving car partnerships.

2020— Amazon, Baidu, Daimler, Mitsubishi, PSA, Renault-Nissan, Tesla, Toyota, Zoox

Amazon is working on a multi-function autonomous vehicle with Toyota
“e-Palette” and plans to debut at the 2020 summer Olympic games
Baidu (the “Chinese Google”) has been developing self-driving cars since 2014, conducting test driving in Beijing since early 2018, and expects to have fully autonomous cars on the streets in 2020
Daimler’s Mercedes has partnered with Bosch and aims at having self-driving cars on highways in 2020
PSA group has partnered with Aptiv (NuTonomy) to launch self-driving taxis in Singapore
Renault-Nissan has partnered with Mitsubishi and promised that the group would have 10 vehicles on sale by 2020 with “significant autonomous functionality”
Tesla released its driver assist technology Autopilot in 2014 and the v.9.0 in September 2018. Tesla is expected to launch the full self-driving functionality earliest in 2020.
Toyota has invested $2,8Bn with Softbank to develop services for self-driving cars and the current best guess for launch year seems to be 2020. It has also invested $500M in Uber’s self-driving car development.
Zoox the robot taxi company has raised $800M at $3,2Bn valuation to launch self-driving cars already in 2020. The company operated years in a stealth mode and soon after giving the first interviews to the press suddenly removed the CEO.

2021 — BMW, Ford, Hyundai, Volvo

BMW showed a self-driving i8 concept car in CES 2016. It has launched an alliance with Intel MobilEye, Fiat Chrysler, Continental, and Robert Bosch and plans to have the first vehicle on the streets in 2021.
Ford invested $1Bn in self-driving car startup Argo AI in February 2017 and is now looking for other OEM partners in 2018. They plan to roll out self-driving cars in 2021.
Hyundai has partnered with Cisco, which is developing “autonomous driving infrastructure”. The time schedule seems vague: on one hand, Hyundai has committed to having this technology in production vehicles 2019, but is, on the other hand, expected to launch a self-driving SUV in 2021–2030.
Volvo (owned by the Chinese automotive giant Geely) has been piloting self-driving in Sweden since December 2017 and publicly committed to launching the service with XC90 SUV in 2021. They have established a joint venture called Zenuity with a Swedish supplier Autoliv for this initiative.

??? —Apple, Audi, Daimler, Didi Chuxing, NIO, Volkswagen

Apple’s project Titan is rumored to have started in 2016 first aiming at manufacturing a complete electric vehicle, but supposedly now focusing on self-driving car platform currently operating 76 vehicles in California
Audi is developing self-driving car prototypes derived from A7 and RS7, but has officially limited to aim at “piloted driving”. There’s no official deadline for the launch, but as part of the Volkswagen group Audi’s future is affected with the partnership with Didi Chuxing.
Daimler partnered with Geely in October 2018 on ride-hailing service in China so it would be logical for them to move on to self-driving cars later on.
Didi Chuxing, the Chinese ride-hailing giant, started self-driving tests in California in 2018 after acquiring Uber’s Chinese operations in 2016. In spring 2018 the biggest car manufacturer in the world Volkswagen partnered with Didi committing to manage a fleet of 100.000 cars.
NIO, the Chinese-American electric car manufacturer, raised $1Bn in IPO in NYSE in 2018 for global expansion and self-driving car development.
Volkswagen launched, in addition to Didi co-operation, the Sedric concept car in 2017 Geneva Motor Show, but has not announced any launch dates.

2020-2070: What to expect?

We’ve now seen that there are many competing commercial launches of self-driving cars coming in 2019–2021 so how soon can we expect them to really affect the global car fleet? There are over 1 billion cars in the world and combined annual production is over 70 million. Therefore, it has been optimistically estimated that in 2030 about 10% of the cars could be self-driving and in 2040 the situation could be reversed with 90% of the cars being self-driving.

Litman (2018) from Victoria Transport Policy Institute illustrated the “Autonomous Vehicle Implementation Predictions” scenarios in the following graph: