The list of large companies that are investing in driverless vehicles is growing. In this video clip from "The Virtual Opportunities Show" on Motley Fool Live, recorded on May 24, Fool.com contributors Jose Najarro, and Travis Hoium discuss some of the strategies that Argo AI -- backed by Ford (F 2.85%) and Volkswagen (VWAGY 2.52%) -- is using to carve out a piece of the autonomous driving market.
Jose Najarro: I found an article today where Argo AI and this is a pretty interesting company that is being backed by Volkswagen and Ford. They're testing fully driverless vehicles in Miami and Austin. Actually, maybe I'll just share my screen off the kind of the notes I took for this article real quick. I think I'm sharing screen. Yes.
First I'm going to start off this testing in Miami and Austin. The employees of Argo will actually be the first customers in these locations here in Miami and Austin. Another thing that they mentioned is this is going to be functional during daytime. This seems to be maybe a small shock because sometimes some of these autonomous vehicles, they have to operate at certain times, maybe during low-traffic areas when not many people are outside.
Argo is saying that, hey, they have the permission to start testing when the road is pretty trafficky and people are out. We know Miami and Austin those two are heavily populated cities. Like I mentioned, Argo AI is one of the few companies testing fully driverless vehicles. I thought this was pretty interesting. We have Argo which is backed by Volkswagen and Ford, we have Waymo, which is backed by Alphabet (GOOGL 1.05%) (GOOG 1.15%). We have Cruise, which is backed by General Motors (GM 3.04%), and we have Motional, which is backed by Hyundai (HYMTF +0.00%) and Aptiv (APTV 1.06%).
I think it's just pretty interesting sometimes we think about autonomous driving because we don't get that first-person news of, hey, this automobile company is focusing in self-driving, then they're most likely not doing anything with it. But we can see a lot of these big players are backing some of this technology.
Hopefully, once it fully evolves then they can take that technology and maybe even move it into their own vehicles. I also found it interesting that Argo has already mentioned future projects. One of the first projects that they mentioned is they want to do commercial ride-hailing services with Lyft (LYFT 3.83%), which I think is pretty cool.
They also want to do these autonomous driving to do a delivery service with Walmart (WMT 4.69%). Pretty interesting technology. I know sometimes, especially we don't live in these high-tech cities. We don't see how autonomous driving is already being tested out. I just wanted to bring this to the other Fools out there.
Travis Hoium: This is a lot more advanced than a lot of people think. Cruise and Waymo both have commercial customers in their vehicles now in San Francisco, is it Houston? Then Phoenix.
Najarro: Phoenix is a big one. Yeah.
Hoium: Yeah. Phoenix is a big one, I think both Waymo and Cruise are in Phoenix. But yeah, this is coming. It's interesting compared to some of the other publicly traded companies that are talking about it. These are I think the quiet companies that are building and launching stuff. Look, we don't want to know that the car driving by the house or by us on the street doesn't have a driver in it. You want it to just work and be safe. I know Argo AI in Florida has been, I believe they have their own, didn't they buy a little city, an abandoned city and that's where they are doing a lof their testing?
Najarro: That's pretty insane.
Hoium: If my memory is right. Whereas Cruise is doing most of their testing in the San Francisco Bay area. I think this is coming a lot faster than people think. They mentioned 2025 that Cruise is going to launch something probably next year, Waymo I assume would be on a similar timeframe, although I don't know what their vehicles are going to be like. But yeah, this is cool stuff. This is where I wonder if my kids are ever going to drive a vehicle.
