Two trillion dollars. That’s how much Google’s driverless cars can generate in revenue. We talked about the driverless cars previously, where they logged 300,000 miles without a single accident. There’s even more to be had in market cap, which could completely revolutionize the global automotive industry. According to Forbes, “It creates business opportunities that dwarf Google’s current search-based business and unleashes existential challenges to market leaders across numerous industries, including car makers, auto insurers, energy companies and others that share in car-related revenue.”
It can also save millions from death and injury and eliminate billions of dollars in costs. According to Sebastian Thrun, a VP at Google and founder of Google X (the same division at Google that was also behind Google Glass), driverless cars can “reduce traffic accidents, wasted commute time and energy, and the number of cars by 90 percent.” According to Forbes, “A car is often a person’s second largest capital expenditure, after a home, yet a car sits unused some 95% of the time. With the Google car, people could avoid the outlay of many thousands of dollars, or tens of thousands, on an item that mostly sits and, instead, simply pay by the mile.” This also frees up people’s wallets to spend (or save) their money depending on their financial status.
This article is the first part of a series on Forbes about the driverless car and how it is set to revolutionize the automotive industry and, perhaps, much more—the way cities are designed, the way people will commute, the status of the global economy—the possibilities are endless.
Source: Forbes