We have all read about our impending future of self-driving or autonomous technology. However, Brian Solis painstakingly gathered all of the information and created a report that covers the latest on all the players in one place.The report reveals some interesting findings such as the fact that competitive autonomous companies are sharing proprietary data to expedite the arrival of self-driving cars. But, the race to 2021 for autonomous cars may be limited due to lack of city modernization.
Tech jobs in AI, machine learning, robotics, and deep learning continue to surge as automakers race to the 2021 finish line. However, consumers are wary of robot cars and automakers are releasing news and introducing smarter features to ease them into the future.
Brian Solis is a digital analyst, speaker, author and a tech hero of mine. He is also a principal analyst studying disruptive technology and its impact on business at Altimeter Group, a research firm acquired by global brand management consultancy Prophet in 2015. For the last two years, Brian has tracked the evolution of the autonomous industry. At the end of 2016, he released his inaugural report on the subject, “The State of Autonomous Vehicles: A Who’s Who of Industry Drivers.”
It tracked the state of every automaker, startup and university building technology for self-driving vehicles. Three months into 2017, the deluge of industry news, necessitated a series of significant updates to remain current.
With almost thirty new entries and including over 75 companies, the latest version of the report is now available. While the report tracks and organizes the state of all industry players, the latest round of updates also reveals interesting trends that reinforce the challenges facing the autonomous industry.
They say that you should never meet your heroes, but I’m glad I met mine in an inspirational chat with Brian Solis on the Tech Blog Writer Podcast.
Transcription of the Podcast Interview
Neil Hughes: When I first started my tech writing on LinkedIn, there was another writer who was a LinkedIn influencer, and whenever my articles were doing really well in those tech channels, there was always another writer sitting on top and his name is Brian Solis. Now I’m not going to lie, he represented everything I wanted to aim for. He is globally recognized as one of the most prominent thought leaders, speakers, and published authors in new technology, digital marketing, and culture ships.
Now who would’ve thought that two years later our paths would cross and I would get a chance to speak with one of my technologists, thought leader and writing idols? His latest work, the race to 2021, the state of autonomous vehicles, and a WHO’s who of the industry drivers, is a fascinating look for anyone interested in self-driving or autonomous technology. So I’m delighted that is agreed to come on the show today, but before I start embarrassing myself by unleashing gushing praise in his direction, let’s get him on the show. So wherever in the world you’re listening to this podcast and whatever it is that you’re doing, I once again invite you to allow me to beam your ears all the way to San Francisco so we can speak with Brian Solis.
So I’ve been a huge fan of yours for a number of years now, Brian. So huge warm welcome to tonight’s show.
Brian Solis: You’ve got me in all smiles over here. So I really appreciate that.
Neil: Now you are an award-winning author, prominent blogger, writer, and most prominent thought or one of the most prominent thought leaders speakers and not the go-to guy for all new technology, digital marketing and culture shifts but if there’s anyone out there that has not heard of you, can you tell the listeners a little bit about who you are and what you do?
Brian: I have no falsehoods about where I sit in the world. I have, I’m pretty sure there’s a huge number of folks that I would love to know who I am to simply because I give all of my work away for free and I hope that it could benefit them.
So, you know, my day job is I’m the principal analyst at Altimeter group, which is a profit company. I studied disruptive technology and its impact on business and as an author and speaker, I’m also a digital anthropologist who studies all of the above, but the impact on culture and society and norms and values and I try to bring all those things together in the form of books, research reports, speeches, you name it, posts, articles, as simply trying to make sense of it all but also to give people, I think a much more human perspective and where this is all going in and why.
Neil: Now I recently came across your work and titled “The race to 2021”, the state of autonomous vehicles and who’s who of industry drivers. Now, what struck me about this, it’s that it’s the only comprehensive report that covers the latest on all the players in one place.
Now in a digital world where tech headlines of falling over themselves to grab quick headlines. This report actually provides real value but can you tell the listeners where this inspiration to create this report actually came from and what it contains?
Brian: Yeah. Well, as one of the disruptive technologies out there, of course, is autonomous anything. Taking the shape largely at least in the press is the autonomous vehicles and autonomous cars, self-driving cars. As someone who was looking at the space, I was overwhelmed almost immediately in the last, I don’t know, the last year and a half, just how quickly it was moving, how many players were starting to crop up, how much money was floating around and I couldn’t find anything that really helped me get my mind around this space. I don’t want to say quickly, but at least comprehensively and I was at that moment inspired to be the person who was going to put that task out their shoulders and say, well, if I needed other people might need it, and it’s a good excuse for me to get my name into the space, in a space is very important to me.
So I spent months and months and months, tracking this, trying to distill it so that anybody, not even experts or executives or investors or entrepreneurs that anyone could read it if they wanted to know about the state of autonomous vehicles. The challenge I had along the way was every time that I had it updated, it was instantly out of date and it took a huge effort to finally get the first iteration out but boy, what an effort.
Neil: And a really awesome, fantastic, interesting findings in there. So just the fact that competitive, autonomous companies actually share propriety data to expedite the arrival of self-driving cars but can you tell me a little more about these findings?
Brian: Right. So it’s interesting in that everybody drew a line in the sand that it was either going to be 2021 or 2020, that we would have full level five autonomous capability here in level five for those who don’t geek out like I do on the subject is basically the car can take… the car is completely driverless. It does not need and may not even include a steering wheel and that; for example, just a couple of weeks ago, BMW stated that they’re going to have a level 5 fully autonomous cars out by 2021.
So when you have this line in the sand, you have to accelerate development and you’d have a lot of expertise that might not necessarily be inside of the organization. You have a lot of competitors, you have a lot of technology that needs to either be iterated or innovative in order to bring this stuff to life and the sharing of mapping data, for example, of roads and atmospheres and, all of basically everything outside of a vehicle will allow the cars, the car makers and also technology companies to focus on getting those cars working with that data as efficiently as possible but some of the other findings I thought were fascinating, like, that car makers were, some car makers were having to hire anthropologists and psychologists as a means of making the car more human to the outside crowds.
So pedestrians, bicyclists, what have you, because when there is, say, for example, no steering wheel and no driver, you don’t have that eye contact that you might have like, do you see me as a car slowing, his car, slowing down because of me or because of something else. They believed that there’s a joy in some level of driving, also, you know, if car makers are giving you the ability to have a car that drives itself, do you need to own it? You know, could it be a shared model? They’re rethinking ownership and financing. They’re also thinking about mobility services, what happens inside of that vehicle while you’re not ..
So everything’s been re-imagined and one last finding that you know, that I, I’ve found that isn’t highly publicized is that we still are highly dependent on city infrastructures to be able to support and warrant, the self-driving car, the ability for self-driving cars to be free roaming and also you have a whole other set of contingencies that smart, even the smartest cars aren’t going be able to prepare for. You know, for example, cyclists who are a bit more aggressive. You have pedestrians who are in, let’s say a conscientious as, as they should be when crossing the road and then you have a car that is being programmed as we speak, to essentially make a decision about what it does in those situations.
Does it hit the person? Does it crash itself? Does it… so very interesting, very interesting findings throughout the whole research.
Neil: Another takeaway from the report was that “The Race to 2021” for autonomous cars could actually be limited due to the lack of city modernization on the road. I mean why is that and what do you think needs to change?
Brian: I think like any government it moves at the speed of yesteryear. All of these car companies and technology companies that are really trying to make that date of 2021, so yeah, everything from street signs obstructed by tree branches or lights that are aren’t as bright as they could be because they’re all technology and in this particular way, the sunrises are sets might be something that the car will miss, you have lines that are out of probably faded. You have cracks in the road, you have all of these city infrastructure things that are part of the conversation but need to be part of the conversation and only certain cities around the world are really, really taking this seriously but again, like anything involved with the government, it moves slowly and it doesn’t, it never has enough budget or resources to apply it.
Neil: So do you think that the traditional leading automakers are struggling with internal expertise due to those shackles of regulation, internal red tape, you know, the old comes with the old way of doing things and why is it that so many seem to be turning to startups to accelerate development because they are agiler and have more talent than you think?
Brian: That’s a great question. I think a lot of this just has to do with maybe the word complacency isn’t 100%, but it is the best word that comes to mind right now.
The reality is, is that car companies just got caught up in the aspect of iterating and maybe some slight innovation, innovating. Take the GPS navigation systems that are in most cars today, they’re the absolute worst from a UX and UI standpoint. Yet car companies continue to invest a ton of money and resources in the development of these proprietary systems. Yet you have people who are driving the car, even though they paid, you know, $2000, $3000, $4,000 for it as an option to be included in the vehicle.
They’ll just place their Smartphone right over the screen using Google or Apple maps. So there’s this, there’s a mindset I would say, or just trying to continue as is while you have startups, essentially not startups but technology companies, let’s just say, such as Google that really paved the road for autonomous driving and had hundreds of thousands of miles under its, you know, virtual belt, already logged for self-driving cars before even the first automaker took it seriously with that type of a headway automakers had to look to startups.
You had, for example, General Motors pay upwards of about a billion dollars for Cruz as a means of getting that technology and expertise in-house. You had Ford make a ton of strategic investments in alliances. You have companies like Uber, also making investments in getting in that expertise. So when the title is Race to 2021, it is literally a race of trying to get the best talent, the best technology to get those cars out there because it really does symbolize the future of these brands and those companies that are considered the most innovative and the most progressive are probably the ones that are going to have to win.
Now, with that said, I know this is a long answer, companies are really doing, auto companies are really doing, taking strides in bringing that talent in-house, for example, you know, Mercedes has a research and development facility here in silicon valley where they employed the smartest minds in artificial intelligence, machine learning, what have you across the board, so they’re all really starting to ramp up on this talent, but they’re also keeping their eye out for either strategic partnerships or acquisitions. Like for example, Intel’s acquisition of Mobil eye recently as a means of staying competitive and staying ahead.
Neil: It seems every weight that was another tech headline telling us that AI and robots are going to take all our jobs. I mean my personal stand standpoint is that we evolve and yes traditional roles will disappear, but that’ll also be a wealth of new roles for a digital world that needs filling.
Do you see a surge in a new generation of tech jobs in AI machine learning, robotics and also deep learning as the race for surges to that 2021 finish line?
Brian: Deep learning is one of the biggest, one of the biggest areas that automakers are investing in on top of all of the other, all of the other technologies you mentioned. Deep learning is, I mean this really is to some extent what every industry is going to be investing into your point earlier that yes, yes, there’s these things are going to take jobs and these things are also going to offer new opportunities that are still going to create new.
Now, you know, there’s a couple of things in your question that, that, you know, I’d love to address. One is that when we talk about robots taking jobs, we don’t really talk about, you know, what the individual responsibility of what we’re supposed to do in that regard. Do we keep going as if robots aren’t taking our jobs, they’re just taking other people’s jobs or do we have to have this personal discovery around, you know, hey, you know, for example, tying it back to the report, one of the challenges that automakers face is that people aren’t sure they liked the idea of robot driving cars, that they are a bit resistant to the idea that they’re just going to insist on driving themselves. Yet these cars are going to continue to hit the market.
So are they going to take over the roads in 2021? No, not at all, but give it 10, 15, 20 years afterward, and then it just starts to become the new normal. So with that, we tend to resist as new things come up and we place ourselves sort of by doing so in the direct line of impact as these technologies start consuming resources. So I think, you know, personally I have to look at, well, what is my job going to be?
Am I going to be usurped by this technology or I’m, am I going to be on the other side of it? And I think that’s an individual question we all have to look at but when it comes to autonomous cars, it’s inevitable as, I mean, it’s just part of how it functions is that it has to think and learn and protect the human being at every turn, at every mile.
Neil: Absolutely and I think you are so right and consumers all wary of robot driving of wary of robot self-driving cars, but how do you think automakers can ease the consumer through this digital transformation?
Brian: That’s a good question. I think they’re trying to do that with each new technology they introduced. So we have, in some cases, level 2 cars, level 1 cars, that are, that are out now. You know, cars that can self-park themselves, that can do lane changes, that can maintain safety distances while in, in an adaptive cruise control mode, you have cars that can apply, emergency braking in the absence of the driver’s ability to do so. So they’re trying to introduce these smarter features, these driver assist features as they position them so that it’s still a psychologically putting the driver and control, even though the car is in many ways a acting in the drivers’ best interests or even without the driver.
Neil: I completely agree and it’s, I don’t think it’s a case of will it happen? but when it will happens, but how do you think the security concerns will be addressed on this technologies Influence?
Brian: Yeah. I think that’s a proactive sort of communications marketing opportunity for automakers and technology companies and also cities should be on the front lines of this. People are indeed wary. We can chip away at that slowly but surely, but it has to be fully intentional in those acts but it’s like you said, it’s inevitable. It’s coming now. It’s just to what extent and to what impact this has when it comes out and over the years that follow but I’ll tell you something, I’ve been in several self-driving cars out in the desert in cities and it is absolutely mind-boggling, it is game-changing. It’s almost the parallel as in virtual reality.
There’s this series of apps that you can try while wearing the Oculus rift for example, of where you stepped to the edge of a building and whether or not you can jump and most people won’t jump and it’s just because it’s so, it’s so lifelike even though you know you are standing in a room surrounded by all your friends, you’re not going to jump and the same thing with autonomous cars, when you sit in there and you know you full well know the car is going to drive itself, you want to take over. It’s in your instinct to take over and it takes intention to have to think differently about it but that’ll come, that will come.
Neil: I know if I put on my analytical head and we look at all the road accidents right across the globe. It’s easy to see that it’s human error that is the biggest cause of the problems on the road. I mean, do you think that was a strong case for removing these Pesky but human drivers with that poll reaction speech to make the roads actually safer?
Brian: I think the roads will be safer by default. I mean these cars are designed to get you from point a to point b safely and also these cars will, it’s called vehicle to vehicle communication. These cars will be talking to one another and they will be able to create these boundaries of safety that I think we’ll see unprecedented levels drops in levels of fatalities and accidents just all over the place, which is why insurance companies are rethinking their entire models as well but I for one, I ride motorcycles, I, for one I am excited to not have to worry about people texting and driving and knowing that there might be a safety cushion that protects me.
Neil: So how long do you think it will be until the average consumer actually accept the concept of self-driving cars at depends?
Brian: It depends. It’s all a, it’s all a bell curve. It’s all dependent on, you know, are you an early adopter of stuff, you know, if you’re, if you’re an apple fanboy, the idea of having a self-driving car is something you’re already chomping at the bit at, but it’s also, by the way, one of the key selling points for Tesla. I think Elon Musk, I think he stated that any car, any 2017 vehicle and after we’ll already have full autonomous technology built in and it’s just a matter of this, of having a switch.
So people are sort of buying that today, as a means of, you know, hoping to get access to that sooner than later.
Neil: Now before I let you go, can you tell the listeners where they can find this report and indeed keep in touch with your theories about the future of technology?
Brian: Well, I’ll tell you, it is available for the low, low price of free on SlideShare. So all they have to do is maybe Google of Altimeter group and autonomous vehicles and it’ll lead them right to the slide share page and for keeping up with my work, I really just appreciate it, if you went to my website, which is briansolis.com or followed me on Twitter or Facebook or Instagram or Snapchat, which are all Brian Solis.
Neil: Excellent. Well, first of all I’ve got to say that that’s my favorite price but like I said at the beginning of the show there and I want to thank you for not only raising the bar once again with this report and making an incredibly useful for people like myself and everyone listening with all that information in one place but for taking the time to come on the show today. So thank you.
Brian: Neil, thank you. It’s really, it’s really a pleasure and also it means a lot to know that people are actually reading my stuff. So thanks a lot.
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