The Road to Autonomous Vehicles

January 28, 2016 James Saye

We all know that autonomous cars are coming but a question that is often asked is when. Well the following is how I like to think about how the development of autonomous vehicles will unfold. I like to think of it in four stages:

Stage 1 - Feet-off:

This stage has already been reached, in fact, it was reached a few years ago with the introduction of adaptive cruise control and slightly more recently traffic jam assist where the vehicle will slow down even to a halt and then progress again once the traffic moves. Currently the majority of a journey could be completed feet-off.

Stage 2 - Hands-off:

We're almost at this stage as most higher end vehicles allow the driver to take their hands off the wheel for a minimal amount of time and the car will steer along the motorway. Full hands-off is something that is certainly technically viable right now but is limited by safety concerns. As has been seen with Tesla's Autopilot people are idiots behind the wheel (or not in this case). This means that all manufacturers currently require a hand to be placed back on the wheel within 10s of seconds.

It'll likely be around 12-18 months before manufacturers allow full hands-off driving for extended periods of time.

Stage 3 - Eyes-off:

In this stage there still needs to be a driver behind the wheel ready to take over in case of emergency but that driver does not need to be concentrating on the driving or be doing any of the driving. Here you could see the driver perhaps in the drivers seat but reading a magazine or using their phone. This will be largely during motorway type journeys.

As with feet-off driving the technology is pretty much there with manufactures such as Volvo going through thorough testing and refinement. Interestingly, Volvo have pledged that by 2020 nobody will be killed or seriously injured in their cars and in the US since 2009 this has already come true for the XC90 and 9 other models.

Full eyes-off driving is probably another 3-5 years away for the mainstream manufacturers. Perhaps two years away before Tesla puts out a Beta product.

Stage 4 - Driver-off:

This is the final fully autonomous stage where no driver is required to be in the vehicle. This requires some quite substantial developments to happen not only in vehicle technology but in infrastructure, legislation and importantly culture. Following several years of eyes-off testing and refinement it's likely that the vehicle technology will be there and legislation will probably have caught up to an extent that innovators will find a way to bring driverless vehicles on to the roads.

Infrastructure is something that is a concern currently. Given how different roads and associated infrastructure is around the world there may be difficulties, for example, road works are often ad-hoc with no real standard way of closing off lanes and roads, how will autonomous vehicles navigate around ad-hoc road works? Autonomous vehicles will enable great changes to our cities as large car parks become unnecessary and a thing of the past there will need to be large drop-off areas created which currently doesn't exist.

The other thing that needs to happen is a culture change. People today are generally unsure about autonomous vehicles with many say they wouldn't trust or use one. However, as autonomous features are slowly introduced through stages 2 and 3 this nervousness will wane.

This level of autonomy is around another 10 years off, perhaps 15 years for the majority.

So that's how I think about the development of autonomous cars. Don't forget to follow for more posts in the future.

3 Technology Trends to Watch in 2016

December 28, 2015 James Saye

It's been a great 2015 for technology as it spread in to every part of our lives. Here's what to look out for in 2016:

1) Virtual Reality

2015 has been an interesting year for Virtual Reality as developers have been getting their hands on hardware and have had time to develop and understand what does and does not work for consumers of VR.

2016 will see a major milestone for VR and that is the release of the consumer version of the Oculus Rift. Coming in early 2016 the Rift will require a fairly high end desktop PC which will be a majorly limiting factor in its success but nevertheless it's an important first step for taking VR to the consumer. In addition to Oculus releases the Playstation VR, codenamed Project Morpheus, will be released in the first half of 2016 with a potentially huge reach.

It's been getting a lot easier for creators too to create content for VR. Facebook have introduced support for 360 degree videos which has been snapped up and tried by big organisations such as the BBC, and after GoPro's acquisition of Kolor earlier in 2015 you can bet that 2016 will see more and more VR content being created in 2016. As this Grandma shows VR content is just awesome.

In addition to VR there's also it's cousin, AR - Augmented Reality. With Microsoft Hololens expected to be released early 2016 and rumours swirling of Google Glass making a comeback it's likely that this will all help make 2016 a great year for Virtual and Augmented Reality.

A question remains though and that is will the smartphone, via something like Google Cardboard, rule VR or will dedicated hardware rule?

2) Personal Fitness & Health Tracking

Over the last couple of years, and particularly in 2015, fitness tracking has really developed. It's been led by new and young companies such as Fitbit and Withings. As a slight aside, Fitbit looks like it had a bumper Christmas with it's apps trending on the App and Play Stores and it's shares jumping on opening on Monday. With a huge range of smartwatches now available with fitness tracking as a major feature and lots more coming for both Android and Apple fans (Apple Watch 2 for example) I think 2016 promises to be a bumper year for fitness and health tracking.

As technology around the IoT (Internet of Things) develops we're going to see more and more devices connected and constantly monitoring us and our environment - from alarm clocks to smart scales and more.

An outstanding question though is how will people use the data they get from these devices? Apple's health kit has gone some way to helping people understand all of their data from a huge range of devices and measurables but it still requires some analysis by the user to get actionable evidence out. Given that the vast majority of these devices are not and will not be certified medical devices due to the huge barriers another question is how will healthcare professionals use the data, if at all?

3) Electric Vehicles

Helped along slightly by the VW scandal and government incentives electric car sales have been on the up year after year. Tesla has shown that good electric cars are possible and they can replace your Diesel or Petrol motor. The new car line-up for 2016 is looking good and with the huge number of new and exciting full electric and hybrid cars being released it starts to look extremely impressive.

The Tesla Model X will start shipping in big numbers throughout 2016 and the Tesla Model 3 - a supposedly affordably full electric BMW 3 Series competitor will be announced later in the year.

Tesla is set to get some big competition though as the very mysterious new company, Faraday Future, is set to announce full details of their autonomous electric car at CES in January. Faraday Future is just a couple of years old and has been very secretive about what its doing. Despite this they've attracted top management and engineers from Tesla, BMWi and a whole host of other manufacturers. They've also got massive investment and are opening a $1 Billion facility in Nevada, USA very soon. Not only are they developing autonomous electric cars but also working on innovative business models likely to be similar to the smartphone model where revenue continues after the hardware has been purchased/leased.

While there'll be lots of full electric cars announced in 2016 many won't reach the road until 2017 or later. However, a stepping stone to this has been gaining huge traction over the last year and that is plug-in hybrid vehicles (PHEVs). Mitsubishi have had huge success with the Outlander PHEV, in fact, they've been unable to meet demand and the buyers have found their vehicles have had almost zero depreciation due to demand. For 2016 though there's a huge list of new PHEVs coming on to the market, actually, almost every new car will have a hybrid option. Here's a few to look out for:

BMW 5 Series
Land Rover Discovery 5
Porsche Panamera
Peugeot 308 R
Volvo S90
Honda NSX
Mercedes E-Class
VW Tiguan

What additional technology trends will you be watching through 2016?

-End-

Everything as a Subscription

October 18, 2015 James Saye

We're all well aware of the popular business model that is 'X as a Service' (XaaS) where by, typically a business, will pay for something like Software but it is delivered remotely, in the case of Software via a Thin Client rather than via Download or a CD (whatever those are). This means that users always have the latest version and resource intensive applications can be run on less resourceful devices. This is great for services where a physical product is not required but what about when there is? Well, now there's a business model that is growing massively in popularity and that is the 'subscription economy' or maybe it should be EaaSub (Everything as a Subscription)? There's now hundreds, probably even thousands of businesses offering products via subscription and there's really no limit as to what you can get. We all know about the usual ones like Netflix and Magazines/Newspapers but here's some you may not know about:

It's even spawned new support businesses such as Zuora who now provide subscription management software to businesses.

For businesses this model has a lot of positives, it provides a predictable revenue stream and by encouraging customers to pay upfront it gives the cash flow required to support operations. In high competition industries it also locks in the consumer and stops them heading for the competition. For the consumer it's a hassle free way to get the consumable products they require often.

It's important though that there's some flexibility as consumers don't want to think they're paying for something that they don't need e.g. if they get a toothbrush monthly but only really need one every two months then they're likely to cancel.

So what's next for the subscription model, could we see typically service orientated businesses offering subscriptions, maybe something like unlimited Uber rides for £X/month? Subscription Hotel rooms? Could we see Apple expand it's iPhone Upgrade Program to it's other products, could Samsung start offering TVs and other large consumer electricals by Subscription?

How will self-driving cars affect the insurance industry?

September 7, 2015 James Saye

As we all know autonomous cars will arrive in the next 10-20 years (if you don’t have a read of my previous post here. The effects on you or I will be extraordinary and the affect on businesses in all industries will profound with one in particular - the insurance industry.

A recent KPMG study [1] found that the majority of insurance companies thought that autonomous cars were too far in the future for them to worry about now. This I think is a major error on the part of the insurance companies. There’s likely to be two paths to autonomous cars with the regular manufacturers such as BMW, Audi, Ford, etc slowly introducing self-driving tech in to their vehicles over the next 20 years or so while high tech companies such as Google, Apple and Tesla will completely leap frog the regular human-driven car and go straight to autonomous vehicles in the next 10 years (I know Tesla makes regular vehicles but their autonomous driving tech is well ahead of others). What this means is that insurance companies are likely to be taken by surprise sooner rather than later as consumers start wanting/needing insurance products that they don’t yet offer for vehicles from these high-tech companies. The advance of autonomous vehicles from regular manufactures will also creep up on them just as the continual advance of mobile has snuck up on so many industries such as retail.

There’s currently around an 85:15 split between personal and commercial insurance [2] across the industry but as mobility on demand increases, spurred on by the introduction of autonomous cars, insurance companies will need to refocus their products to the commercial side. The ‘uberisation’ of autonomous cars will remove the need for the majority of personal car insurance policies. As an aside and in the shorter term though is the increase in car sharing services such as BlaBlaCar - I’m yet to see insurance policies specifically designed for people that regularly use these services.

Data is already prolific in our lives but one aspect that its yet to really arrive in is our cars and particularly our car insurance. While there’s a few companies offering black box policies they’re few and far between and mainly aimed at new young drivers. With the increase in data in our cars there’ll be a huge shift to data based insurance policies but one has to question how many insurers are ready for this change, how many have a data analysis skill set, do they have the processing, storage and security requirements - I suspect not.

One of the major reasons for the introduction of autonomous cars is to increase safety. Today, around 94% of crashes are caused by human error (the rest a mix of component failure and environmental factors) [3] so with the introduction of autonomous cars will inevitably come a huge reduction in crashes and therefore insurance claims. This you’d think would be good news for the insurance industry but consumer demand and competition in the industry will most definitely lead to much lower premiums. In addition to this there’ll be much fewer cars being purchased and therefore fewer policies. With the huge advancements in technology and the naivety of the current industry players there’s bound to be start-ups offering insurance products that people want - I could quite easily see black boxes in cars with dynamic pricing based on how much you use the autonomous features, if you drive manually then you pay more (this goes back to the previous paragraph). You could also see manufacturers themselves offering this insurance as part of the vehicle cost (remember that we’re unlikely to own cars in the future but rent them per thousand/miles).

The aggregate of all of this could spell bad news for many of the big players - who will be the Blackberry and Nokia of the insurance industry?

[1] Automobile Insurance in the era of autonomous vehicles. Survey results. June 2015. KPMG.

[2] UK Insurance Key Facts 2013. Association of British Insurers.

[3] Traffic Safety Facts. Crash Stats. February 2015. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.