A journey to a near future of mobility

You just left the house for another day of work. At the doorstep of your building, a car is waiting for you. But this is not a regular car — at least, not a personal vehicle or a ride-hailing company’s sedan with a chauffeur. The only resemblance is that you called it via your smartphone.

This one is a level five self-driving vehicle, which does not require any human assistance to operate. With its full automation system, you will not need to pay attention to the road or even hold a driver’s license.

You approach the car; it opens its doors and welcomes you by calling your name and confirming the destination you picked. “Yes,” you answer in a still sleepy voice. As you are setting up your laptop to check the morning emails, the voice assistant starts to hand you information about the estimated time of arrival, the weather, the stock market, and the latest news about the business world — all tailor-made by the infotainment system based on your subjects of interest.

You then take a few moments to look around and wonder when all these changes took place: the vehicle does not have a driving wheel and the cabin looks more like a small office with two sofas than a car. “Good ol’ ti…” — but then you remember the insane number of hours spent on traffic jams — “… Well, never mind.”

Since the autonomous car-sharing services were introduced, you spend your daily commute shuffling through emails and messages, and by the time you get to the office, your day is completely planned out. Before that, you had to embrace the traffic jams, hoping that no one had an accident or broke its car — Good old times? Probably not.

Mobility is no longer ran by automotive companies

This might sound futuristic and a Blade Runner kind of prediction, but it might be closer than we think. Mobility is no longer a sector where only the automotive companies are investing in.

Intel, for instance, recently acquired Israelian mobility startup Moovit for approximately 900 million USD to further improve its mobility branch that was already on development since 2017 (with the acquisition of Mobileye).

“Intel’s purpose is to create world-changing technology that enriches the lives of every person on Earth, and our Mobileye team delivers on that purpose every day [on the mobility side of the business]” — Bob Swan, Intel´s CEO.

The chip manufacturer aims to become a complete mobility provider, including robotaxis services — this service alone is forecasted to be a 160 billion USD market by the year of 2030.

Alphabet, Google’s parent company, is in the same position as its subsidiary Waymo, a self-driving car project that started in 2009 and is already being tested in Phoenix.

The list of tech companies working in mobility is far wider than these two. Amazon, Apple, Baidu, Cisco, Huawei, Microsoft, Nvidia, Samsung, and many others are now working in mobility solutions.

Automotive companies investing in tech

The automotive industry entered a crossroads after Tesla and some other companies got into the business. After this, the big players started to realize that the technology was now the most important aspect of a car — not the engine nor the looks.

Does your car talk to you? And if so, does the voice assistant already know your preferences, such as the adjustments you have on your seat, the temperature, the kind of music you enjoy the most at different times of the day? Personalization is key to this new Era — I am talking about the kind of things that only a private chauffeur would do for you.

The BMW Group is a good example of how the automotive companies understood the importance of tech and soon began to scout for a partner company to help with this mission, and they found Critical Software. The result of this partnership is Critical TechWorks, a joint venture that is working on autonomous driving systems, infotainment, intelligent personal assistants and much more.

Daimler, Volkswagen, Hyundai, Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi, and many other groups are investing in tech either to provide new ways of transportation — like flying taxis — or integrate new technologies within the existing models.

Volvo is another example of an automotive company trying to proactively expand its operation within the mobility sector. They not only intend to have autonomous technology by 2022, but they are also joining forces with other industry giants, such as Bridgestone and Stoneridge, to support — with their $150M fund — early-stage companies with projects in ground transportation and mobility. Logistics and supply chain are of interest because of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to Volvo.

As I said, although the advancements seem to be futuristic, when you join forces between some of the biggest tech organizations and automotive companies, the industry progress can be extremely faster.

Self-driving technology amid the pandemic

Think about one of the most common issues in the pandemic (talking from personal experience): the supermarkets. “Why did you go to a supermarket when you can send the stuff home, João?,” you may wonder. The answer is: I could not find a freaking available slot for delivery on the e-commerce pages. NOT-A-SINGLE-SLOT!

On top of this, I am not the kind of person who shops once every month — I have my own cravings now and then and sometimes what I’ve planned to cook for dinner is not appealing anymore and need to change it.

If the supermarkets supplier chains had autonomous delivery services, three problems would have been solved already: their profit margin would improve in the long run, since there would only be an initial investment in the equipment; customers would feel more secure, since no human contact was needed to deliver the groceries directly to their homes; and deliveries would happen sooner rather than later.

The same thing can be applied to the Healthcare industry. If level five autonomous vehicles were already here, tripped ambulances would not be needed to transport possible cases that could potentially infect the healthcare workers. You would get inside a car and a team would be waiting for you at the hospital entrance when you were about to arrive, which could wash disinfect itself automatically.

10 years from now, with all the investments from big corporations, mobility as the way we know will most likely change drastically, for the better.