When you head away on your travels, it is always recommended to hire a car to find the best locations and get away from the tourists. But, hiring a car and driving around a new city can be time-consuming and stressful when you look for a location to park your car.
I am not sure about everyone else, but we have a tendency to over-rely on incredible Google Maps and/or Waze when travelling as both apps will direct you to your destination, usually offering the quickest method available, whilst you focus on your driving.
The latest Google Maps will now find parking spots along the way to your ultimate destination. It’s as simple as selecting “Find Parking” and, whilst you drive, Google will offer you various parking options and you can pick or choose, depending on how close you are to your final point.
Google is now becoming a major contender when it comes to location-based solutions. While having Waze, Google Maps, Urban Engines, and together with its autonomous driving technology (which will probably be available in the upcoming years) it seems like they have the ability to disrupt the Automotive industry. However, the Mobility-as-a-service market is still not profitable.
Uber and Google are still not making money by offering mobility services such as Waze, Maps, or ride-hailing services. Yet, they do disrupt a whole industry which used to be very strong for over four decades.
Uber is a like a “Mack Truck just rolling down the street gaining speed,” said Magid Advisors President Mike Vorhaus on CNBC’s “Fast Money” this week. “So I do think we’re eventually going to see this in the numbers of auto sales.”
These tech giants understood that when cars will become electric and autonomous (and probably cheaper as well), there will be a huge gap in the middle to provide mobility services packages. Same as the Smartphone revolution. The automotive manufactures know that there is a big “storm” coming ahead and are making the right changes to become competitor in this field. But there is a question which still stands – How can companies like Toyota, BMW, Mercedes-Benz and General Motors, who are experts when it comes to metal and oil, will compete in the unknown territory of IT against Google, Uber and others tech giants?
After disrupting the Internet,Mobile, Music, Video, Gaming, Navigation, Mapping, Operating systems and many other industries – Google is planning to do it again to the Automotive industry.
What technology does Google use to find parking spaces? Do they find separate parking spaces on the street or entire parking garages? And in the case of parking garages, how does Google know whether or not there are spaces left? It doesn’t seem like a big game changer to me, as many GPS softwares have already been able to point out where you can park. I think Google is indeed planning to disrupt the automobile industry, but rather through their self driving car than through finding parking spots! Maybe you could convince me otherwise that this is a big changer!
Hey, Neri, I agree with your post that the automation will disrupt the automobile industry in the coming years, perhaps this transformation has already stated. Apparently, not only the traditional auto producers have been preparing and promoting this trend, but also several called “new entries” such as Google and Tesla you have also mentioned above have been participating the gaming and actively initiating some fantastic projects.
However, from my point of view, this disruption within the automobile industry still needs some boosts to be able to be successful in the market. According to the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) which is a useful model for this case, the adoption of automatic cars is an interweave across different factors. Undoubtedly, automatic cars will be beneficial. People don’t need to get the driving licence before “drive” the car, and all operations are controlled by the central system. Whereas, we don’t know yet whether such fancy cars will be easy to use, what is the attitudes of people towards and to what extent customers are willing to purchase these vehicles once they have been introduced in the market? Besides, Some other external factors play roles as well. Privacy is a big concern for using automatic cars. Such huge amount of personal data is exposed during every moment via connections between Apps and services. I think no one can be sure if there will not be any potential leak problems. Besides, throughout the automatic disruption process for the automible industry, complementary industries, such as energy, public facilities (ex. parking) and legal regulations, need to be transformed as well to support the former.
Thus, this trend is not an easy task for today’s discussions; instead, it demands nourished to be realised. Nevertheless, I do believe that there are still vast unexplored potentials regarding the way how we can use the internet. As a result, I think more industries will be disrupted and revitalised through the exploration of the data and the development of the internet.
Source regarding the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_acceptance_model