It only took a simple Google search to find the market research results I posted in post #36, plus many more.
…don’t lecture me about google. A “simple google search” often leads to garbage search results. “The global autonomous vehicle market is expected to be valued at $54.23 billion in 2019” doesn’t tell us anything about consumer demand. It tells us that there has been a significant amount of investment in a technology that isn’t on track to pay off next year. I can’t view any of the reports without having to pay money: I can’t tell if any of the reports are based on actual consumer research, or if they are based on something else.
And the head of Google SDC’s and Waymo SDC’s have both said they will never work in all conditions. A bit of a stretch as never is a long time. Never is way beyond the time they will be useful to me, or many of the people I know. Probably won’t ever happen for the conditions I drive in. No point in it. Not a big enough market. If you want it, go for it. It’ll be very interesting.
Who are these two people?
John Krafcik is the CEO of Waymo, which is a subsidiary of Alphabet, which is the parent company of Google. Who is the other person that you’re referring to?
So you don’t think a market research looked into whether there is a market for this product?
Yet, they are investing billions upon billions of dollars to make self driving cars.
It may not work for the <1% of car drivers who operate in severely severe conditions, but they will work for the >99% who don’t, and that’s where the money is.
Let’s be realistic as well… cars themselves don’t work in all conditions, and people routinely operate cars in conditions that are more dangerous than they realize. There’s a reason so many people die in car accidents, and it isn’t because we’re overly cautious about driving.
…I think that the OP asked a question that your “simple google search” didn’t answer. I think in the absence of any actual data we shouldn’t make assumptions about how that data was obtained or what it contains. I think if you know the answer to the question you just asked me you should just answer it and not leave us all hanging.
God, you just like to argue for argument’s sake, don’t you? The OP, right in the title, asked if there was market research. scr4 linked to a bunch of market research. If you have specific problems with what his Google search turned up, why don’t you say it ?
…god I’m not arguing for the sake of arguing. Did you even take a look at the cites? The OP didn’t ask for just “market research” but they asked for “market research that indicates serious demand for self-driving cars.” The google searches that scr4 posted do not show “serious demand.” From what I could tell they don’t give any indication of demand at all. That is a specific problem I have with what the google search turned up: and I have already said that this is the problem that I have with it.
What does a market valued at $550 Billion mean if it isn’t an indicator of some sort of demand for the product being sold?
What does a market size of over 4 million autonomous vehicles per year mean if not a demand for autonomous vehicles?
For fuck’s sake, the title of his first link is
and your problem is that his links “don’t give any indication of demand”?
What do you want to indicate market research showing demand for self driving cars besides a company with “research” in it’s name putting out a report with the words “Self driving cars” and “market demand” in the title?
My mistake. I thought Waymo and Alphabet and Google where all different companies.
…why don’t you explain what it means? How did the market get that value?
I’ve already said I know there is demand for autonomous cars. As I made clear in my previous post its not about “demand”, its about quantifying that demand.
I’m skeptical of forecasts of customer demand for 10 years into the future. From what we can tell from how the figures were derived (without having to give them my email address) :
Looking at all three cites: they all use CAGRto come up with their forecasts. I confess I’m no expert. But CAGR is a measure of investment and return, not directly of consumer demand.
A simple google search (yeah I know, the irony) for “CAGR self driving cars” gives us this:
CAGR ranges from 21% to 63% in the cite provided by scr4 to 81% in this report (albeit measured over a different period than the other two reports).
The figures are all over the place. Which figure from which market research company do you think best represents customer demand?
Lets forget about forecasts at the moment. Are their any figures that quantify what the consumer demand is right now for self driving cars?
The entire business model of many of these market research companies is to sell their research to companies so they can use that research to get more investment. The research often reflects what their clients want to hear. It isn’t enough to just read the title of the report.
I’m working on my business plan for 2019 at the moment. Last year my photography business started a pivot to video, moving away from “just photography” to creating a range of digital content. It turns out that a lot of research that I (and thousands of other companies) used to justify the pivot turned out to be fake. Literally fake. There are no accurate numbers. There are no accurate metrics. There is no real way to determine the actual size and scale of the market. The “pivot to video” that started two years ago was a disaster for many industries and it was all based on a misguided sense of trust in what we were being told. I’m still pivoting to video (because the margins are substantially bigger): but the marketing plan is changing substantially.
I honestly don’t know enough about this stuff to be able to give a fair assessment of the data thats been presented. But I know enough about the industry and I know enough about how these marketing companies work to know that I can’t take the title of the report and the summary at face value and I think its unfair to expect me to do so.
All I did was to point out to k9bfriender that this thread wasn’t just about "demand’, but about quantifying that demand. A google search for a few headlines really doesn’t satisfy the question in the OP IMHO.
ffs, I posted links to two consumer surveys upthread, but y’all are too busy arguing.
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=21394039&postcount=192
…thank you.
You did understand my post, correct? If you want to know market size another way, you can just:
a. Take the dollar amount of all the salaries paid to professional drivers in countries you could feasibly operate autonomous cars in. (some backwards countries will probably ban them, are too small, have too informal a system of traffic laws, are too poor, etc)
b. Assume you will have to pay about 1/3 of the savings to the freight companies so they are *forced *to fire all their drivers eventually.
c. Work out how fast you can deploy vehicles for technical reasons and production reasons.
Even the laziest figuring I have done says the ceiling is 120 billion dollars for the USA alone. Add in the EU, a few years later, China…
This is forced demand. In a competitive marketplace, if you can offer a cost advantage to freight carriers, they must take it. (companies that refuse would soon be sued by shareholders and be forced to replace their executives). It doesn’t matter if the operators of freight companies hate autonomous cars on a personal level or feel terrible laying off drivers, they won’t have any choice in the long term, assuming the cost savings are real and substantial as expected.
So yeah, even if the poll upthread said 99% of Americans hate autonomous cars and will never ride in one, it doesn’t mean there isn’t a substantial market for them.
…I’m sorry: but which particular post of yours are you talking about, and why do you think I would have read it?
I don’t want to know the potential “market size” another way thanks. My question was the same one as the OP: and my question has been answered by Maserschmidt.
Meh you’re full of it then. I give an analysis that explains why even if you don’t trust the methodology, there’s real demand here for real money and only technical reasons (autonomy is obviously an extremely difficult engineering and software problem) are really in the way. So even if you think all these valuations are hot air, unlike a random crypto or some other random scam, there’s fundamental value being offered here. This isn’t like trying to work out how many people are going to buy a Segway. In that case, people’s needs are already being met by bikes and skates and so on, the value add of a segway was small and not in excess of it’s cost. (though it turns out that the basic idea was sound, it just needed a much cheaper platform…)
…give me a fucking break. I didn’t ask for your analysis.
I didn’t trust the methodology of the citations that I was refered too, and I don’t trust the methodology of the “analysis” that you posted.
IMHO there was little fundamental value in the post that you made. You are a random anonymous poster and your post was full of assumptions like “forced demand” that I simply can’t believe you expect me to take seriously. You didn’t address anything I said. You answered a question that I didn’t ask. I don’t know what particular post of yours are you talking about that you asked me about before, and I still don’t know why you expected me to have read it.
We are talking about a technology that is potentially years, maybe decades away from getting to the point where we have autonomous cars in all places you could feasibly operate autonomous cars in. Of course there is going to be demand. Whether or not that demand will be great enough to eventually make this venture profitable for the companies investing in this is another question all-together.
If you don’t trust other sources, your own reasoning, or the laws of economics, why ask a question at all? You have already made up your mind it appears. You apparently started with the idea you know better than the executives of dozens of separate companies, some of the most skilled computer scientists who have ever lived, and various large banks and institutions controlling billions. (Referring to the last investments in autonomous vehicles)
So whatever. Suit yourself.
Forced demand is the idea in a competitive marketplace, when an innovation comes along that lowers cost more than your profit margin, you either adopt the innovation or begin losing money every quarter until bankruptcy. It is obviously correct, no doubt there is another term for it.
…both of Maserschmidt’s citations were trustworthy. They both had solid methodology’s, conducted by organizations with good reputations. I asked a question so that it could be answered, and my question got answered. Your assumptions are incorrect.
What is it, do you think, that I’ve “made up my mind about?”
Nope. I was making comment on the veracity of the citations that were provided, nothing more.
Will do!
This doesn’t make any sense. If I’m making a profit: and an innovation comes along that could potentially lower costs and I choose to adopt it, I make a bigger profit margin. But the cost of adopting the innovation may exceed the cash I have in the bank, or I might not be able to borrow money to acquire the innovation, then I don’t get the innovation. That doesn’t mean suddenly I “begin losing money every quarter until bankruptcy”. My profit margin (assuming I retain my customer base and no other substantive changes) remains the same.