- Situation Analysis
Drive.ai was established by a team of Ph.D. and graduate students in the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory of Stanford University. It is an American based company located at California, whose headquarter is in Mountain View. The company provides autonomous driving vehicles to customers. In August 2016, Drive.ai appeared from slyness form with $12 million in financing. The early funding of the company investments was done by InnoSpring Seed Fund, Oriza Ventures, and Northern Light Venture Capital. The company made a funding announcement where the board of directors, Andrew Ng joined the company (Lavasani, Jin, Du, 2016).
In May 2018, Drive.ai started working with Transportation Management Organization of Frisco which would be liberating on-demand autonomous vehicles in Frisco, Texas. It was for the first time that public operation of self-driving cars started in Texas. In California, Drive.ai has a Nissan NV2000s, Audi A4 and Lincoln MKZs for its testing.
2.0 Market Analysis
Drive.ai is a self-driving startup which was started in AI Research Lab to build an autonomous vehicle that can assist technologies in a car. The company has heaved to $12million in the beginning stage project funding from Oriza Ventures, Northern Light Ventures, and InnoSpring Seed Fund. The company spends more than $2 on maintenance, insurance, trucking automobile products. It no more has to deal with influential customers unlike other autonomous companies may have to do. Drive.ai can take benefit from the developing market and increase their growth. It was the thirteenth company to test autonomous vehicles on roads in California (Garg, 2017). This means that twelve companies had previously got the chance to enter test-ready phase.
It can be said that Drive.ai is one of the few companies that has to build a sort of brain in their autonomous vehicle by including deep learning, perception and usual learning processing. It provides a distinctive deep learning approach to people driving these cars, which learns rules and the behavior as like humans. This autonomous vehicle allows for simple adaption and entry to new characteristics the more an individual drives. The vehicles of Drive.ai have a camera, the main computer in the trunk, radar sensors, and lidar units that helps to see number of yards and build a map around the car.
Fig: Structure of self-driving car
2.1 Market Demographics
Drive.ai aims to provide self-driving vehicles to people who like to drive on their own. The company uses Artificial Technology to make automated transportation solutions by which they can improve the state of potency. Drive.ai provides a ride in their autonomous vehicles to nearly 10,000 people. These people work at HALL Park and visitors of the Frisco TMA within an area that comprises of office space and retail shops and entertainment hall. These cars guide program currently by picking and dropping eligible passenger from and to The Star and Hall Park.
Drive.ai can enhance its business by providing training camps so that they can teach and train passengers who are going for self-ride. There should be a number of road tests so that technology does not fail in a difficult situation. It should have the qualities to be safer than human riders.
2.2 Market Needs
Driverless or autonomous vehicles are not a very long old concept of the car. These cars have the capacity to sense and read the environment and functions without any human effort. Presently, several players are helping in the growth of fully autonomous and semi-autonomous cars. To fulfill the market need, Drive.ai has joined with TLM (Frisco Transportation Management Association) to execute self-driving car trials in the city of Texas. Being a startup company, it is very difficult for Drive.ai to run the business. So, they are in search of buyers who can assist them in their business (Riley, 2019). As per the report, the company has appointed Jefferies of the investment bank for the post of an adviser, and in latest news, it was also heard that the company is concerned in selling its business. The company has not achieved much to accomplish the requirements of the market, so it is of no surprise that they are looking for a buyer. The companies with strong financial support also have to struggle in business as like Apple Inc. and Uber Technologies.
The company has offered a mobile app through which riders can book their car whenever they wish to. However, the market requirements are to be satisfied so that customers experience a better ride on every journey. AI in autonomous vehicles helps the company executives to track their car and take necessary measures in case of any emergency.
2.3 Market Growth and Trends
Reports say that Drive.ai has been seeking a buyer as they are finding issue to settle in the market. The company has collaborated with TMA to carry out autonomous cars and also to improve connectivity with employees, employers, visitors, and residents of Texas. Drive.ai is focusing on important software modules to develop self-driving in reality. They announced $50 million funding from NEA with contribution from present investors and GGV. NEA’s leadership and presence have helped Drive.ai to attain its vision (Drive.ai Growth and Acceleration — Series B, 2017). Moreover, the company got financial support from the Board of Directors that include Andrew Ng from AI pioneer and Carmen Chang from NEA.
The following market trends have helped Drive.ai to enhance its business:
Profound Learning First: Drive.ai is a profound-learning first organization that has provided a better context-based and nuanced autonomous solution. They are dedicating a large number of funding to scale their technology. Besides, they have new technology to power this modern era, and an essential vision to make self-driving cars a reality.
Nationalization: The Company is trying to flourish its business with the help of its investors. This market trend has helped Drive.ai to develop their business with manufacturers (Swan, 2015).
Collaboration: Drive.ai is getting funding from investors like InnoSpring Seed Fund, Oriza Ventures, and Northern Light Venture Capital. The company has also collaborated with GGV and NEA that has helped them to build relation with customers and producers. Collaboration with such organizations has allowed them to increase their quality standards in the market.
Communicational Technologies: The rise in the internet has helped companies that rely on technologies. This market drift provides modern technology and network by which companies like Drive.ai has learned industry trends.
- Competition Analysis
Competition helps companies to expand their knowledge and encourage them to enhance their sales. Every company that emerges in the market are more likely to get competitors within a year or less. Drive.ai has some competitors in the market that also deals with autonomous vehicles (Daily et al., 2017). It is important for the company to deal with its competitors appropriately so that they can focus more on their business rather than on invaluable clashes. These competitors try hard to prove them superior from other companies that provide similar product and experiences.
The leader of the company has the responsibility to engage them in business development, market research and channel growth so that they can preserve privacy. This will help them to make a proper strategy without having any fear of being copied by their rivals.
The company needs to expand its business internationally so that more and more people come to recognize about the company and its product.
The leaders should also organize surveys to figure out organizational difficulties and limitations. Drive.ai can make plans to conquer the challenges. Moreover, the company can enhance their relationship with producers who are much experienced in this field.
After its establishment, some companies have emerged in the market with a similar concept like Nuro Inc/CA, Flux Auto, Voyage auto, Gatik AI and Optimus Ride. These companies provide autonomous vehicle to riders who prefer self-diving. As a whole, it is important for Drive.ai to come out with some unique features to beat these competitors (Sousa et al., 2017).
References
Garg, R. (2017, May 02). Deep Drive: An Analysis Into Drive.ai. Retrieved March 03, 2019, from medium.com: https://medium.com/@RakGarg/deep-drive-an-analysis-into-drive-ai-fc97bab4a11f
Riley, D. (2019, February 28). Report: Self-driving car technology startup Drive.ai is looking for a buyer. Retrieved March 30, 2019, from siliconangle.com: https://siliconangle.com/2019/02/28/report-self-driving-car-technology-startup-drive-ai-looking-buyer/
Drive.ai Growth and Acceleration — Series B. (2017, June 27). Retrieved March 30, 2019, from medium.com: https://medium.com/@drive.ai/drive-ai-growth-and-acceleration-series-b-fcdf78cf9e3a
Lavasani, M., Jin, X., & Du, Y. (2016). Market penetration model for autonomous vehicles on the basis of earlier technology adoption experience. Transportation Research Record, 2597(1), 67-74.
Swan, M. (2015). Connected car: quantified self becomes quantified car. Journal of Sensor and Actuator Networks, 4(1), 2-29.
Daily, M., Medasani, S., Behringer, R., & Trivedi, M. (2017). Self-driving cars. Computer, 50(12), 18-23.
Sousa, N., Almeida, A., Rodrigues, J. C., & Jesus, E. N. (2017). Dawn of autonomous vehicles: review and challenges ahead. Proceedings of the ICE-Municipal Engineer, 1-12.
Ionita, S. (2017, October). Autonomous vehicles: from paradigms to technology. In IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering (Vol. 252, No. 1, p. 012098). IOP Publishing.
(Ionita, 2017)