Autonomous driving technology has the potential to disrupt the way people and things go from point A to point B. But what will the first large-scale self-driving push actually look like?
In this interview clip from Motley Fool Live, recorded on March 10, Andrey Bolshakov, founder and CEO of Evocargo, talks with Motley Fool contributor Toby Bordelon about what he believes will be the first space to be transformed by autonomous driving, and why.
Toby Bordelon: Do you think we get human transportation first or is it probably get more cargo and package transit first? I think I know what you would say the answer is.
Andrey Bolshakov: Yeah. As my history I started with human transportation, but now I personally believe that cargo transportation will be the first area of really huge usage because of economy of that. In case of, for example, if you're talking about taxi driving and all these autonomous taxis. If you just watch on their economy, they're using a lot of lidar, a lot of cameras. In case of the cost of equipment they're using for this autopilot thing, and the cost of the driver salary, and so on, the cost of all this equipment will be years of the salary of the driver they're trying to get rid of, for example. I suppose it couldn't be economically efficient in years. It is going to be even worse in case of regulatory. Because as I mentioned, if you have people not just outside the vehicle but also inside the vehicle, there are a lot of issues regarding sitting, going in, going out and so on. It would be really harsh and really hard to work in. In case of focus area, all of these, taxi and public transportation takes place in public areas, like taking your children from school or to school or something like that, or maybe deliver ice cream to your children or something like that, the case of technology and safety, the safety level of such type of vehicle should be much higher than we can expect in vehicles working on just cargo transportation on some manufacturing areas, for example. Taking all of it into account, I personally believe that cargo transportation will be the first area between two of these.
