March 18, 2019—A new study revealed that partnerships are essential to the development of autonomous vehicles.
According to a report by DesignNews, a survey covering automated vehicles from Navigant Research Leaderboard revealed that company partnerships are key in order for autonomous vehicles to move forward.
“With the exception of Tesla, automakers are recognizing that it’s going to take longer than they thought to get this technology really robust and widely deployed,” Sam Abuelsamid, principal analyst and leader of the Navigant study, told DesignNews. “The development costs are high and the near-term returns are going to be lower than what they expected two or three years ago. So they’re trying to figure out, ‘How can we spread out our costs and get more scale while we make sure this technology is going to work?’”
The study found Waymo LLC to be the autonomous vehicle leader, based off of technical strategy and execution. In addition, GM Cruise and Ford Autonomous Vehicles followed shortly after. Others that received high scores were Aptiv, Intel-Mobileye, Volkswagon Group, and Daimler-Bosch, DesignNews reports.
Companies were ranked on ten aspects: strategic vision, go-to-market planning, technology, production strategy, sales and marketing, product capability, product quality, product portfolio, staying power, and partnerships.
The study found that Waymo had formed a number of partnerships with several companies, including Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, Jaguar Land Rover, Walmart and Avis. Additionally, GM had partnerships with Softbank, Honda, and Doordash.
