The autonomous car business looks smaller and more distant every day

What a few years ago many people announced (among them Mr. Elon Musk) the business of autonomous cars as something almost imminent, has been faced with reality and things are beginning to look more in their proper proportion.

It is no longer imminent, the pie is smaller and companies that hoped to revolutionize the world are falling.

Both Uber and Lyft have sold the company they had dedicated to autonomous vehicles (for not much money, it must be said), to try to focus on their “core business” and reduce their losses.

Even Waymo, which is the most advanced of all, despite the fact that it has autonomous taxis operating in Arizona cities, has seen its valuation lowered by investors.

The company was valued in 2018 at $ 175 billion by Morgan Stanley, and has recently been valued by the Financial Times at $ 30 billion, and its chief executive officer has left the post after more than 8 years at the helm of the company business.

What happened ? That everyone has received a reality bath. Starting with those who valued these companies with a certain irresponsibility, because the market has not changed so much in the last two years.

But they have realized how difficult it is to become fully autonomous under the changing (almost infinite) circumstances that can arise on a highway.

Of all these companies Waymo I think has been the most serious and never said that it had the “solution” at hand, and always insisted that they were trying to achieve a “Fully Autonomous” system but that it was not close.

In the astronomical valuations of this type of companies, I believe that the irresponsibility of the financial analysts has been more “to blame”, who of course should not be engineers.

Little by little the waters return to their course, the balloons deflate, and reality means that a few companies (Toyota, Volkswagen, General Motors, etc …) are implementing “improvements” to driving in their vehicles to improve their safety and security. making life easier for drivers.

Autonomous vehicles will gradually be applied in limited and highly controlled areas, especially in cities where distances are not very great and if problems arise, cars can be accessed to solve them without taking too long.

And in time, we will see.