In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. Friedrich Nietzsche
In addition, Avis Budget is a big player in the short-term rental market through its Zipcar subsidiary. I think short-term rentals will be one of the biggest uses for autonomous vehicles.
Read More
An obvious reason for the merger is to give the PSA Group access to North American markets. PSA concentrates its operations in Europe. Another goal of the merger is to give PSA access to Chrysler, Ram, and Jeep’s popular pickup trucks, vans, and sport utility vehicl
Read More
To explain, autonomous Chrysler Pacifica minivans hauled 6,299 passengers in their first month of operation in California, TechCrunch claims. Overall, the vans operated by Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG) subsidiary Waymo completed 4,678 passenger trips in July 2019.
Read More
Under these circumstances, Alphabet has more in common with Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A) than a traditional tech company. Like Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.B) Alphabet owns many subsidiaries, decentralizes management, and makes a lot of money.
Read More
In fact, the average Lyft driver earns between $364 and $377 a month, Business of Apps estimates. Thus like Lyft stockholders. Lyft drivers are probably losing money on their investment.
Read More
I believe consumer brands are moving ads to Amazon because the Everything Store is where Americans do their shopping.
In particular, many consumers look on Amazon first. In fact, 49% of product searches begin on Amazon, CNBC estimates.
Alphabet, Fiat Chrysler (NYSE: FCAU), and Samsung are teaming up to add Android Automotive to all Fiat Chrysler vehicles, The Detroit Free-Press reports.
Read More
Strangely, Uber’s exit from autonomous vehicles will hasten the self-driving car’s arrival. A manufacturer will gain several years of intensive research and vast amounts of data from the ATG.
That research and data will put a company several years ahead of the competition. A company with experience building autonomous vehicles; like Fiat Chrysler; can use that data to create a self-driving car.
Predictably, up to 25 companies signed onto NVIDIA’s robot taxi effort, a press release indicates. The organizations in NVIDIA’s driverless taxi effort range from startups like NuTonomy and Yandex to the world’s oldest automaker; Daimler, and Volkswagen (ETR: VOW3) one of the world’s largest automakers.
The market for driverless taxis will be huge if Bosch, Daimler, and NVIDIA can get them to work. Even if regulators refuse to allow robot taxis on the streets, the technology will have many other uses.
Read More
Such valuations definitely justify Waymo’s business plan of providing the operating systems for other companies’ autonomous vehicles. That includes Peterbilt semi-tractors in Atlanta, Chrysler Pacific Minivans in Phoenix, and Jaguar IPaces in Arizona.
A huge advantage is to this plan is that the manufacturing is left to the companies that specialize in it. A great benefit is that Chrysler Fiat (NYSE: FCAU), Tata Motors (NYSE: TTM), and PACCAR (NASDAQ: PCAR) take many of the risks. Tata owns Jaguar and Peterbilt is a PACCAR subsidiary.
Waymo avoids the expense of building a factory and setting up dealerships, and all the trouble of dealing with the United Auto Workers (UAW). Companies with existing factories, supply chains, dealerships and union contracts take the risks.