The cost of owning a car is expensive. You’ve got to pay for the loan, taxes, insurance, maintenance, repairs, parking, and gas or electricity. And every day that passes, your car is worth less and less. That’s why many believe that private vehicle ownership will be replaced by apps that can summon you a vehicle when you need to go somewhere. It’s called TaaS (Transportation as a service).
TaaS is a lucrative business, especially if it’s autonomous. A driverless vehicle is the key to profitability. Cleantechnica wrote that an auto executive described it as a “license to print money.” But even though self-driving cars have been a goal of software engineers ever since 2004, when DARPA sponsored its first Grand Challenge in the Mojave Desert, they’re still barely a reality today. The only things close to autonomous cars in TaaS use are Waymo’s test fleet in Phoenix and GM startup Cruise’s test fleet in San Francisco.
But now, Cruise and GM have entered a long-term strategic alliance with Microsoft to accelerate autonomous cars’ commercialization. The partnership will combine the best of both worlds: software and hardware engineering excellence, manufacturing know-how, cloud computing capabilities, and partner ecosystem. This makes perfect sense since self-driving cars are more like computers on wheels, after all.
Dan Ammann, Cruise’s CEO, said:
Our mission to bring safer, better, and more affordable transportation to everyone isn’t just a tech race – it’s also a trust race. Microsoft, as the gold standard in the trustworthy democratization of technology, will be a force multiplier for us as we commercialize our fleet of self-driving, all-electric, shared vehicles.
Microsoft believes in this mission so much it’s throwing $2 billion into the pot, raising the market value of Cruise to about $30 billion. Previous investors include Honda and GM. Cruise, in turn, will use Azure, Microsoft’s cloud computing platform.
Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO, said:
Advances in digital technology are redefining every aspect of our work and life, including how we move people and goods. As Cruise and GM’s preferred cloud, we will apply the power of Azure to help them scale and make autonomous transportation mainstream.
Mary Barra, GM’s CEO, added:
Microsoft is a great addition to the team as we drive toward a future world of zero crashes, zero emissions, and zero congestion. Microsoft will help us accelerate the commercialization of Cruise’s all-electric, self-driving vehicles and help GM realize even more benefits from cloud computing as we launch 30 new electric vehicles globally by 2025 and create new businesses and services to drive growth.
Cruise unveiled the Cruise Origin in San Francisco last year, but it only allows non-employees to ride in its vehicles. The Origin is the company’s fully driverless prototype. It doesn’t even have a steering wheel, pedals, or other controls related to human driving.
