Tesla is the leader in the electric vehicle market obviously, but it may not be the only winner. As technology matures and become more advanced, it will become more of a business competition (assuming design & production generally won’t be a problem in the next decade).
And another round of fresh financing in this field is showing us the future to come, probably with a few leaders in different sub-segments of EV market.
And the self-driving is still a combating ground for companies. Because of its complexity, lots of collaborations and alliances are expected. (e.g. Toyota to invest $500 million in Uber for self-driving cars)
Led by Amazon, the $700 million investments in Rivian, announced on February 15, is the latest move. As the leader in electric pickup and SUV, Rivian will help Amazon to build the next generation logistics network. After all, although amazon is in e-commerce (and other) business, it is also a logistics company (so does Walmart). In the next 15-30 years will have its own (delivery) network & infrastructure, independent of USPS, UPS, FedEx, etc., comprised of (autonomous) airliner, trucks, delivery robots, etc… Yes, Amazon may become similar to the US postal system in the 19th century.
The R1T and R1S will be produced at Rivian’s manufacturing plant in Normal, Illinois, with customer deliveries expected to start in late 2020.
Just before that, on February 7, Aurora has raised more than $530 million in Series B financing for its self-driving technology, led by Sequoia Capital and includes “significant investment” from Amazon. [Techcrunch]
The investment was reported in early January [recode] and not a good news for companies like Tesla. The team is led by 3 industry leaders: CEO Chris Urmson, who was the CTO for Waymo, CPO (chief product officer) Sterling Anderson, Tesla’s former head of Autopilot, and CTO Drew Bagnellone, one of the founding members of Uber’s autonomous efforts. Aurora is now valued at more than $2.5 billion.
Meanwhile, Tesla Semi is probably still the most ready and earliest e-truck with auto-pilot. First unveiled in November 2017, Tesla Semi has its prototype traveled by itself (without any escort or accompanying vehicles) for a week to arrive at the J. B. Hunt headquarters in Arkansas on August 24, 2018.
What’s cool is that it was driven across the country alone (no escort or any accompanying vehicles), using the existing Tesla Supercharger network and an extension cord
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 25, 2018
Other self-driving companies have started to explore use cases.
Cruise Automation, the self-driving unit of General Motors, is teaming up with DoorDash to test a food delivery service in San Francisco using autonomous vehicles. The pilot will commence in “early 2019.” [Verge]
Nuro, which raised $940 million from Softbank Vision Fund in Februry, is focusing on self-driving bots and has a (pilot) partnership with Kroger.
And Waymo has launched/tested its self-driving ride service in Arizona in December 2018.
And Ford and Volkswagen might join together to bet on Argo AI, valued at about $4 billion, as Bloomberg reported on February 14.
And Daimler and BMW may go into an extensive cooperation in autonomous driving.
First half of 2019 might be the last chance to get into this game if winning the future of cars is expected.