big carmakers are piling into the field because they believe that autonomous vehicles could wipe away their traditional business selling cars to individual buyers, Founder Collective partner Eric Paley said in a story this week by Xconomy’s Detroit/Ann Arbor editor Sarah Schmid Stevenson.
However, there are many partnerships among aspiring autonomous vehicle companies and consumer app firms, and that might lead to consolidation in mobility services. In March, Xconomy mused on the share of profits that mobile app companies Uber and Lyft might be able to claim when ride-hailing becomes an offering of mobility fleets, which will bear huge capital expenses to make, buy, or lease vehicles, as well as maintain them.
Even when the set of competitors is more limited, Behr says, vehicle fleet profitability can hinge on maintenance efficiency, as it does for airlines such as Southwest.
For an existing business such as Ford’s Chariot commuter van fleet, he says, “Every minute a van can’t go pick up customers is a minute of lost opportunity, lost revenues.”
Lost time on the road could be more consequential for operators of expensive driverless cars, whose acquisition cost might have to be amortized over many more miles than a conventional car’s. To minimize vehicle downtime, Behr imagines, fleet operators with pricey self-driving cars may try to coordinate maintenance tasks so that sophisticated LIDAR sensor mechanics work alongside others such as tire fill-up teams, like a pit crew at a raceway.
Behr says he already sees signs that automotive maintenance companies are adapting to the changing business environment. Vendors are going mobile themselves, promoting “We’ll come to you” services such as windshield repair, tire replacement, and gas tank fill-ups. Two of the vendors offering fleet support through Stratim in the Bay area are examples: MobileAuto Concepts and Yoshi both offer an array of on-demand, roadside services.
Behr says we’ll see more roving units doing things like washing cars while they sit in shopping mall parking lots.
“Those guys are now saying, ‘We can start working with GM; that’s a good customer for us,’” Behr says.
Photo credit: Stratim
