Then driverless cars take over on our streets

Self-driving vehicles will change our way of moving, that's no doubt.

Self-driving cars already exist. The autopilot on some modern cars offers different degrees of basic self-driving. Speed ​​control, automatic braking and in some cases even more autonomous driving. But still, no car manufacturer is calling on customers to completely drop the wheel.

The biggest optimist of them all, Tesla's Elon Musk, is certainly ready to let the computer take over completely already next year. He recently went out and said that the company's cars should already be able to upgrade the software by 2020 to become fully self-propelled. But most others are skeptical that things will happen so quickly.

"We overestimated how fast self-driving cars would come," Ford CEO Jim Hackett said at a car forum in Detroit earlier this year.

The companies that drive the development are partly old car companies that collaborate with new technology companies with cutting-edge expertise in artificial intelligence and partly technology companies with the software that sees the hardware itself, the physical car, as the secondary.

On one side is GM who bought Cruise and Ford and Volkswagen, which have come together to learn together with the newly launched Argo AI. Tesla is also similar to the old car manufacturers by building and making money selling cars.

Among the technology companies are Waymo, Uber or Lyft, where they invest in developing a technology that can be applied to different car models. Today, each of them cooperates with a limited number of car brands. But they do not intend to become a car manufacturer. They will make money from selling transport services. Per run, or maybe as a subscription?

Everyone wants to be at the top of the food chain, closest to the end customer who pays. If we will stop owning cars and only order when needed, this is where the money is. If we still want our own car, then it is the operators who can sell self-driving vehicles that are properly positioned.

Regardless, there is a great advantage to being the biggest player. The more cars you have on the roads, the more vehicles that learn from the traffic and can help improve the software that is updated on all models of that brand. The more cars in the taxi fleet, the easier it is to get a fast and more who will choose that company.

Mikael Thor is one of those working at the forefront of development in Silicon Valley, as technical group manager at the "taxi" company Lyft's development department in Palo Alto for self-driving technology. He believes that self-driving cars on the streets are only a few years away.

-Now you talk about 2021/2023 in terms of fully self-driving cars. First on highways, where there are less complex traffic situations. We must probably wait four to five years before it is a reality even in urban environments.