10 Surprising Things I Learned From The “Future of Mobility” Conference Call
On November 10th, I held an hour long conference call with the CEOs of three leading Israeli founded Mobility companies (otonomo, Oryx…
On November 10th, I held an hour long conference call with the CEOs of three leading Israeli founded Mobility companies (otonomo, Oryx Vision and Nexar), and a leading mobility Israeli VC (Maniv). You can view the invitation to the call here. The replay of the call can be heard by dialing 800–633–8284 (dial 402–977–9140 if calling from outside the U.S.), Call ID# 21820997#. The slides referenced in the call be found here. This brief post highlights 10 interesting things I learned from the call.
The current mode of car ownership is highly inefficient. According to McKinsey, cars are used less than 4% of the time. The 96%+ of the time that cars are spent parked requires 5,000 square miles of land (more than 2X the size of Delaware).
Morgan Stanley estimates that autonomous cars have the potential to generate $1.3 trillion in annual savings, which includes $507 billion in annual productivity gains from the 75 billion hours a year Americans currently spend staring out the windshield while driving.
3. Demographics are accelerating the pace of the disruption as millennials have less of an interest in driving (there’s been a 47% drop in 16 year olds with drivers’ licenses), and the graying of the population necessitates driverless cars to avoid more seniors being stranded.
4. With more than 100,000 Nexar AI dashcams currently in use, the company has analyzed data from more than 10 million miles of driving, four times as many miles as Google has analyzed to date.
5. Nexar’s first insurance partnership provides a $500 discount for Pro drivers in New York who utilize the dashcam
Attaching a smartphone that becomes a Nexar AI Dashcam
6. Autonomous driving systems are based on vision and decision making. The better the vision, the better the decisions the system is able to make. Oryx Vision’s antenna based technology, which uses light “waves” instead of light “particles” , is 100X more sensitive to light, enabling vision that provides for far better autonomous driving decision making.
Oryx Vision Product Description
7. The biggest surprise working with Detroit noted by the Oryx Vision CEO, and seconded by the other panelists, was the frequency with which CXOs from the major car companies, and the major auto industry suppliers, are traveling to Israel to meet with tech companies. While GM is the first car manufacturer to set up an R&D center in Israel, with plans to triple it’s size, other industry players (e.g. Ford, Daimler, Honda, Bosch..) are actively looking to follow.
8. By leveraging the otonomo Data Exchange, car manufacturers are able to predict maintenance issues before they happen. In one early test, notifications to the drivers of potential problems tripled visits to “approved garages” after the warranties ran out (when owners generally seek lower priced alternatives).
The otonomo Data Exchange
9. Among the most surprising requests for access to car data was from fast food purveyors like McDonalds, who can take orders for food from cars and have it ready as the driver gets to the restaurant. otonomo is getting even more requests for this in Europe than the U.S..
10. When asked what the most surprising thing he learned from the massive amount of data collected to date, Eran Shir, Nexar CEO, responded that the amount of data a car needs to truly understand the world is staggering. He feels Nexar got to 90% understanding of what is happening on the road pretty quickly, but the last 10% will take awhile, with each location having it’s own set of unique conditions. For example, in India, the system has needed to understand cows, which apparently think they own the road.
If you liked this post, click the💚 below so other people will see it on Medium!