Who is playing the self-driving vehicle game and who will win?

Today UBER was granted a permit to test self-driving cars in California after agreeing to pay a $150 registration fee to the DMV.

I love UBER’s disregard for the status quo as much as anybody but seriously, they have raised a bazillion dollars so just pay the $150 and move on surely!

Anyway.......... UBER had moved the testing of their self driving cars to Arizona when they were threatened with legal action after a few of their self-driving SUVs allegedly failed to stop at red lights.

So while UBER will not initially be picking up passengers in California as they do at other testing locations such as in Pittsburgh and Phoenix, they surely are not far off and given they are using Volvo XC90s in the trial, it made me think about how the self driving ecosystem is going to evolve, who is playing the game and ultimately who is going to win?

So I took at look at exactly who is testing self driving cars in Silicon valley and as of yesterday, the Californian DMV had issued Autonomous Vehicle Testing Permits to 26 companies including:

"Traditional" Automotive companies

• Volkswagen • Mercedes • Nissan • General Motors • BMW • Honda • Ford • Subaru (8) • Tesla (9)

Silicon Valley Tech Companies

• Google • Bosch • Delphi

• Zoox • Drive.ai • Faraday & Future • Baidu • Wheego • Valeo • NextEV • Telenav • NVIDIA • AutoX • Udacity • Navya • Renovo • PlusAi • Uber (18)

So that’s 8 traditional manufacturers, 9 if you include Tesla and 18 new entrants. So exactly how this plays out is still unclear given the difficulties new entrants have had in manufacturing vehicles.

Google recently closed its development plans and has now teamed up with Fiat Chrysler and even Tesla the only Silicon Valley car company to ever build and sell cars only produces around 60,000 cars per year - so its hardly mainstream.

My best guess is that the major manufacturers will continue, possibly with a few casualties along the way but increasingly, these new players will look to dominate the software, data and hardware that will make self driving cars possible and ultimately change the way we own and use vehicles into the future.

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