Tuesday, September 12, 2017

The Value Of Tesla's Data Hoard

Following up on the post immediately below, "Winner-takes all effects in autonomous cars".
The source for this piece, EVAnnex is rah-rah for autonomous in general and Tesla in particular so some of the forecasts are a bit exuberant but the fundamental point, valuing/pricing Tesla's data stash is, if anything, understated.

From EVAnnex, August 28:

Autopilot Advantage: Tesla’s data puts it miles ahead in the autonomous vehicle race
What will the self-driving automotive world of the future look like? Nobody really knows, although a lot of people seem convinced that they do. Predictions are all over the place and, in a few years we’ll see that some of them were right, and some were wrong. The only thing certain is that autonomous vehicles will trigger huge changes that will disrupt every automobile-related line of business, and then some. Another point that the pundits all seem to agree on: Tesla is poised to be one of the major players.

ARK Invest Analyst Tasha Keeney, appearing on DisrupTV, makes a number of predictions about the shape of tomorrow’s transportation system.

Most analysts agree that autonomous taxis will greatly reduce the cost of getting around. Keeney estimates that they will cost around 35 cents per mile, or roughly half of the total cost of owning a car. She also agrees with conventional wisdom that auto travel will become much safer, predicting that accident rates will decline by over 80%.

Ms. Keeney does make one contrarian prediction: she believes autonomous vehicles will cause automobile traffic to increase threefold by 2030. Such an outcome could have catastrophic effects on urban planning and the environment. Fortunately, most observers expect that autonomous technology, along with the rise of new ownership models, will have the opposite effect: it will allow vehicles to be used more efficiently, ending the cycle of ever-expanding roadways and freeing up urban space currently devoted to parking lots. A recent report called Three Revolutions in Urban Transportation chimes with ARK’s view, in a way: it predicts that, if consumers embrace autonomous technology, but not vehicle sharing, traffic will indeed increase, and the potential environmental benefits of electric vehicles will not be realized....MUCH MORE, including the videos