Technology of the Week – The Disruption of Autonomous Vehicles

Link to Video

The technology that we choose for this week is autonomous cars. Transportation plays a huge role in society and influences many different industries. To get a better idea on which industries to focus, we interviewed two experts. The first interview we did was with a practice leader of disruptive technology at Gartner, Bart Mellink. The second interview was with Vincent Everts, trend watcher and tech entrepreneur. Coincidentally Vincent was going to pick up his new Model X at the Tesla factory in Tilburg on Thursday, and invited us to come along. While we were not allowed to film everywhere inside the factory, we did get some great footage and we were even allowed to drive the new Model X! Or actually, let the new Model X drive us, as it is capable of accelerating, stopping, and even changing lanes on its own. Due to time constraints of the video, we were not able to include much of both interviews, however you can watch the full interview with Vincent on Vincent’s YouTube channel.

Bart Mellink encouraged us to look at the aftermarket effects that autonomous cars would have. What he meant with the aftermarket was what happens during the lifecycle of the car after it has been manufactured. Who buys it, who services it, who insures it, what do you do with it? Each answer to these questions will lead you to a player that plays a part in the aftermarket. Currently these players are split into different industries. Owners of cars are often private consumers. These private consumers get their car serviced at repair shops, their auto insurance from insurance providers, and park at privately owned parking lots. These are all individual industries that each have large markets with many private consumers.

Once fully autonomous cars become the majority, cars will be utilized very differently. Currently cars are estimated to be used only 5% of the time, whereas they are parked 95% of the time. Autonomous cars will be able to drop people off, and continue on to help the next person. This makes shared mobility much more attractive, which means that privately owning a car as a consumer will become less common. Car ownership will most likely transfer to companies that will employ large fleets of autonomous cars. This means that all these industries that previously had a large market of many individual customers, now have to deal with a smaller market with only a few very large customers. This will radically transform these industries. The main difference being that business networks and partnerships will become much more important!

We decided to choose two industries, and discuss how they would change using Porter’s five forces model of industry attractiveness. The first industry we choose was the insurance industry, which after analysis turned out to become less attractive. The second industry we choose was the parking industry, which after analysis turned out to become more attractive, mainly because we believe it would merge with the autoservice industry.

Team 19 in in the Tesla Factory in Tilburg!

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