Autonomous Vehicles May Be The World's Single Largest Industry By 2050

Autonomous vehicles industry is going to be big, not soon, but by the year 2050, one can expect the industry to explode to the tunes of a whopping $7 trillion.

According to a recent survey done by Strategy Analytics for Intel, Autonomous vehicles will most likely be the single greatest opportunity for the creation of value and wealth during the 21st Century, with the self-driving vehicles industry growing on to become a $7 trillion industry by 2050 making it one of the single largest industry, globally.

Considering companies like Uber, Lyft and Google's Waymo are already much ahead in the driverless cars race with Waymo even claiming to have completed over 3 million miles already, the $7 trillion figure isn't that hard to digest. The race has in fact become so intense that the players have already started clinging in each other claws to get ahead. Earlier this year, Uber was sued for allegedly stealing proprietary information regarding self-driving cars from Alphabet’s Waymo. In addition to these aforementioned big players, there are many other firms like Nutonomy, Skymind, Torc Robotics, Mentor and Lvl5 who all want a piece of what is expected to be one of the most disruptive innovations of the last two centuries.

Autonomous vehicles aren't like any another invention. They're the need of the future. As of today, Automobile manufacturing industry employs over 50 million people and produces nearly a whopping 100 million vehicles each year. It is almost large enough to represent the equivalent of the world's sixth largest economy. However, these huge numbers are still not capable of catering to the needs of a population nearing the 10 billion people mark. Hence, there's needs to be a change in vehicle infrastructure we have today and autonomous vehicles can be that change. In addition to adding more driving years to the elderly, autonomous vehicles can also make a positive difference in pollution and climate change caused by vehicles. Their efficiency in terms of their ability to communicate with each other and infrastructure can eliminate traffic congestion and the need for street lights.

Not only will the acceptance of autonomous vehicles change the way we travel, but it will also have a massive impact on the way we live. According to experts, once we start relying on autonomous vehicles and become mentally strong enough to give them charge of our driving seat, while we enjoy the ride on a passenger seat, it is possibly going to be a watershed moment for AI's acceptance.

The study done for Intel is in sync with an earlier one done by Boston Consulting Group where it predicted that the global autonomous cars market will be worth a whopping $42 billion by 2025 and a jaw-dropping $77 billion by 2035. According to it, a quarter of all cars sold could be autonomous vehicles by then.

Unfortunately though, India won't be a major part of these figures as the Indian government for now isn't open to driverless cars as according to them, it will result in loss of jobs, something which goes against their ideology. Instead, they are more into promoting the trend of electric cars. Recently, India’s power minister Piyush Goyal announced that the government is aiming to have an all electric-car fleet on Indian roads by the year 2030.

Autonomous Vehicles May Be The World's Single Largest Industry By 2050

Autonomous vehicles industry is going to be big, not soon, but by the year 2050, one can expect the industry to explode to the tunes of a whopping $7 trillion.

According to a recent survey done by Strategy Analytics for Intel, Autonomous vehicles will most likely be the single greatest opportunity for the creation of value and wealth during the 21st Century, with the self-driving vehicles industry growing on to become a $7 trillion industry by 2050 making it one of the single largest industry, globally.

Considering companies like Uber, Lyft and Google's Waymo are already much ahead in the driverless cars race with Waymo even claiming to have completed over 3 million miles already, the $7 trillion figure isn't that hard to digest. The race has in fact become so intense that the players have already started clinging in each other claws to get ahead. Earlier this year, Uber was sued for allegedly stealing proprietary information regarding self-driving cars from Alphabet’s Waymo. In addition to these aforementioned big players, there are many other firms like Nutonomy, Skymind, Torc Robotics, Mentor and Lvl5 who all want a piece of what is expected to be one of the most disruptive innovations of the last two centuries.

Autonomous vehicles aren't like any another invention. They're the need of the future. As of today, Automobile manufacturing industry employs over 50 million people and produces nearly a whopping 100 million vehicles each year. It is almost large enough to represent the equivalent of the world's sixth largest economy. However, these huge numbers are still not capable of catering to the needs of a population nearing the 10 billion people mark. Hence, there's needs to be a change in vehicle infrastructure we have today and autonomous vehicles can be that change. In addition to adding more driving years to the elderly, autonomous vehicles can also make a positive difference in pollution and climate change caused by vehicles. Their efficiency in terms of their ability to communicate with each other and infrastructure can eliminate traffic congestion and the need for street lights.

Not only will the acceptance of autonomous vehicles change the way we travel, but it will also have a massive impact on the way we live. According to experts, once we start relying on autonomous vehicles and become mentally strong enough to give them charge of our driving seat, while we enjoy the ride on a passenger seat, it is possibly going to be a watershed moment for AI's acceptance.

The study done for Intel is in sync with an earlier one done by Boston Consulting Group where it predicted that the global autonomous cars market will be worth a whopping $42 billion by 2025 and a jaw-dropping $77 billion by 2035. According to it, a quarter of all cars sold could be autonomous vehicles by then.

Unfortunately though, India won't be a major part of these figures as the Indian government for now isn't open to driverless cars as according to them, it will result in loss of jobs, something which goes against their ideology. Instead, they are more into promoting the trend of electric cars. Recently, India’s power minister Piyush Goyal announced that the government is aiming to have an all electric-car fleet on Indian roads by the year 2030.

Google (Alphabet) Sues Uber For Self Driving Car Tech Theft

Late last year, we had reported about how after seven long years of teasing around about its ambitious self-driving car project, tech giant Google had finally announced its own self-driving car company, Waymo. And now, just after three months of being launched, the company has landed itself in its first big controversy. 

Waymo has sued Uber Technologies and its autonomous trucking subsidiary Otto over allegations of stealing its confidential and proprietary sensor technology.

Launched in May last year, Otto has been making headlines since its launch because of Anthony Levandowski, one of its co-founders. A former executive on Google's self-driving project, Levandowski was one of the many executives who ended up abandoning the project midway when the pressure of churning out a cutting edge technology with a mandate to turn a profit crossed the rooftop.

It is important to note here that Waymo functions within Alphabet, Google’s parent company, which came into existence in 2015 with an objective of overseeing the company’s far-flung projects that have no relation with Google’s core business of online search and advertising. Since 2014, those far-flung projects have reportedly lost a whopping $8 billion, with a major chunk of it going into self-driving cars research. This was the reason that had led Google to tighten the grip on its Waymo project executives.

Waymo has accused Uber and Otto, which was acquired by the popular ride services giant in August, with the theft of confidential information on Waymo's LiDAR sensor technology and then using the technology to pace the speed of its own autonomous technology. According to the lawsuit filed by Waymo, Uber acquired Otto in a whopping $680 million deal.

The complaint filed in the Northern District of California clearly states Waymo saying, "Uber's LiDAR technology is actually Waymo's LiDAR technology."

In the complaint, Waymo seeks an unspecified amount in damages and a court order that prevents Uber and Otto from using its proprietary information.

In a statement issued by the ride services giant in response to the lawsuit controversy, Uber said that it is taking the allegations made by Waymo against Otto and Uber employees quite seriously and they will be reviewing the matter carefully.

The LiDAR technology, makes use of light pulses reflected off objects to gauge their position on or near the road, is considered as a very important part of autonomous driving systems. While working on the autonomous driving technology for last seven years, Google realised that the previous systems have been extremely expensive. This is when it decided to design one which is over 90 per cent cheaper, and gave birth to its very own LiDAR technology. According to Waymo, its LiDAR technology is among the company's "most valuable assets."

Waymo's complaint states before resigning from Google in January 2016, Levandowski had downloaded over 14,000 confidential files, including LiDAR circuit board designs. This very act of his gave Uber and Otto the leverage to put their self-driving technology ok fast-track. Google's Waymo has accused its former employee of then attempting to "erase any forensic fingerprints" of his act by intentionally reformatting his laptop.

"While Waymo developed its custom LiDAR systems with sustained effort over many years, defendants leveraged stolen information to shortcut the process and purportedly build a comparable LiDAR system in only nine months," the complaint filed by Waymo reads.

According to Waymo, it learned about this usage of its trade secrets and patent infringement by Uber and Otto after it received an email from a component vendor that included a design of Uber's LiDAR circuit board. Upon observance, it noted that the design had a "striking resemblance" to Waymo's LiDAR circuit board design. Waymo was apparently inadvertently copied on the said email.

[Top Image: Cnet]