Google, The Leader in Autonomous Driving

Google can power related technologies and information from its projects and investments compared to traditional vehicle manufacturers.

Autonomous driving keeps to be one of the most widespread research and recent development activities within the global automotive industry. Both automakers and technology companies alike endeavor to put advancements into production and implement them for on-road testing and approvals.

IHS Automotive, part of IHS Inc. reported that tech-companies like Google and others are presently looking toward possible solutions in the autonomous vehicle space. Uber, Lyft and others are "car-as-service" companies that cause disintegration and add operational expertise significantly influencing autonomous vehicle development and consumer consideration in the next coming years, accrding to the report of Business Wire.

Google's R&D is so important that IHS says that Toyota's November announcement of a $1 billion, five-year investment in AI, driverless cars and robotics is partly due to Google's rapid technology advances, as reported by Forbes.

An excerpt from the IHS Automotive report, which was released this Thursday says, "The key to self-driving cars is software that can interpret all of vehicles' sensors and learn to mimic the driving skills and experiences of the very best drivers. Google is the current technology leader in this arena, according to IHS Automotive estimates, which suggest the technology company has invested nearly $60 million so far in autonomous vehicle research and development, at a run rate of nearly $30 million per year."

"Unlike traditional vehicle manufacturers, Google also has the ability to leverage adjacent technologies and learnings from its other projects and investments - including robotics, drones and related technologies that help automotive operations, such as neural networks, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and machine vision. This provides Google researchers additional expertise not available directly to traditional OEMs."

IHS estimated that 12 million self-driving and driverless cars will be sold worlwide by 2035. In about five years, Google and automakers are anticipated to have driverless vehciles on the world's roadways, Computer World reported.

'Caas' is expected to be deployed in 2025 and autonomous driving is anticipated to lower the cost of mobility services as a whole. "CaaS...will provide car mobility services for anyone, since no driver's license is needed and it will be an affordable transportation solution for a large portion of the global population," IHS said. The market researcher estimated that 85% of the world's population, nearly 6.2 billion people globally are without a driver's license.

"Google's autonomous car, which is already being tested on U.S. roadways, will have a major impact in the coming years," according to Egil Juliussen, senior director at IHS Automotive Technology. Uber is also beginning to implement some of its own R&D in CaaS.