Intel bought into the self-driving car market; they bought MobilEye for 15 billion earlier this year. Intel has started a partnership Google's self driving offshoot. Intel is testing on Waymo's cars and believes they will be almost completely self-driving. Waymo develops the chip for the self-driving software to put into the cars. They are a major key to the development of this market. Waymo is a company launched by Google to get into the self-driving car market. Intel is also trying to partner with Uber and is fully partnered with Waymo and Lyft. But Google is in a lawsuit with Uber which is causing a stall in the partnership. The lawsuit is over patent infringement. The case opened an influx of emails to be surfaced about how Google was going to partner with Uber to make driverless riding sharing. Google turned down the offer to launch Waymo with Intel.
I believe that if Intel is successful with their partnerships that they will change the whole transportation system. The technological advancement will kill the taxi business and Uber unless Uber joins the partnership. Because it would kill the taxi business, it would cause a separation in the job market. A lot of people would loose their jobs and will be required to learn to job skills. This could cause the unemployment rate to increase. Also, It will create a huge profit for the companies involved because it would take out the cost of paying the driver. The company would be now paying for the car and the gas, not the driver's fee. The price of ride sharing would dramatically decrease, causing a huge saving to consumers. It will cause an increase in the job market of software engineers. If the companies can get the technology to work effectively I believe this would make a big change to our economy.
https://www.engadget.com/2017/09/18/intels-self-driving-tech-will-make-waymo-vehicles-fully-autonom/
I think that this technological advancement would kill off a section of the taxi business, but not the whole thing. I think there would be some people who are skeptical about the technology and if it really does work the way it is supposed to and won't malfunction, which will cause the taxi business to still have some consumers in the market. On a different note, I think this new technology could be used to decrease the number of drunk/under the influence driving accidents that occur every year. If someone is drunk and trying to drive the car, it would be neat if the new technology recognizes that and takes control of the car to get the person home safely. I also agree with your comment that this would create a huge profit for the companies involved if consumers buy into it.
ReplyDelete