Trov and Waymo Continue Mainstreaming Driverless Cars

by Michael Keane

In a move that continues the trend towards mainstreaming driverless cars, Waymo and Trov have partnered up on the insurance side of the business. Waymo has already partnered with Fiat Chrysler on using its vehicles for the test

In an article (link here) written by Darrell Etherington ( @etherington ) and published by TechCrunch, the companies will be partnering to cover passengers lost and managed property. This was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.

On another note, a congratulations goes out to Phoenix AZ leadership for getting these vehicles on the road. A link to the story on that is here.

KeaneVCC continues to see the trend towards driverless cars moving forward. Some previous posts on the subject are below.

Electric/Driverless Cars Part 1

Electric/Driverless Cars Part 2

Electric/Driverless Cars Part 3


 ** This blog is used for opinions and ideas and should not be used as a direction to act without doing your due diligence.**

Why Tech Will Buy an Automaker

by Michael Keane

As the struggle and innovations continue to develop in the driverless car industry, the idea that a tech company will buy an automaker is becoming more and more real.  A few things come to mind in forming this idea. The first one that comes to mind is company valuation and cash balances. Many tech companies that are involved in the automotive space are sitting on a lot of cash.  The second area that indicates the probability of this idea is that there are already partnerships and smaller deals between the tech companies and the automotive companies. Another area that brings this idea to fruition is finding the answer to the question of “What does the future look like in the space and who is best capable to lead this move into the future.

If you look at the tech sector and the automotive sector in terms of valuation, you will see that it is entirely possible for a deal to happen. The following chart gives a quick snapshot of valuations of different tech companies involved in the auto space as well as a few automakers. You can see the cash balances and valuations of the tech companies actually put them in a favorable spot to make a bid. Tesla’s market cap and Ford’s is now basically equal.

Company	Valuation	Cash on Hand	Amount Invested in Auto
Alphabet	$600 Billion	$86 Billion	New Company named Waymo
Intel	$167 Billion	$5.5 Billion	Just made a bid for Mobileye
Apple	$753 Billion	$21 Billion	Undisclosed Amount in Software
Tesla	$45 Billion	$3.5 Billion	Full Electric Car Company
Ford	$47 Billion	$16 Billion	Auto Company
Fiat Chrysler	$21 Billion	$18 Billion	Auto Company
GM	$51 Billion	$14.5 Billion	Auto Company

Large partnerships are starting to abound between the two industries. Recently, Intel made a bid for Mobileye. Ford has been in partnerships with Alphabet. GM purchased Cruise Automation for more than $1 Billion dollars last year and has a partnership with Lyft. Mercedes Benz recently reached an agreement with Uber with regards to a driverless car. With all this smoke around, the likelihood of a purchase continues to get stronger and stronger.  

While in the past, someone might not associate tech with cars, today you just can’t get away from the connection. Driverless eco friendly vehicles are the future. Big companies are putting large fortunes in play to make this happens. There will be some hiccups and disasters for sure. But don’t be surprised if you wake up one morning, pick up your phone (instead of the tv), and find that a car company has been purchased by a tech company.

**Disclosure - KDK Fund, a client of KeaneVCC, owns shares of Ford. KDK Options, another client of KeaneVCC, owns an April spread options trade on Microsoft. **

Driverless Cars (Post 3 of series)

by Michael Keane

This post will be covering the effects of driverless cars on the oil, insurance, and government taxing authorities. With Google already logging in over 1 million road miles, and the successes that have been created, these vehicles are not far from hitting the consumer markets. Problems show that it will eliminate demand for oil and insurance industries, while at the same time removing a significant source of revenue from tickets and crashes. Possible solutions include finding new uses and new sources of revenue. Links to the previous 2 articles (general post 1 here, and more focused article for post 2 here).

Most driverless cars will be almost certainly electric vehicles. This is not a good sign for the oil companies. If car companies are going to invest in the technology to have a driverless car, electric engines will be a no brainer.

Insurance companies are almost certain to lose massive revenue from driverless cars. The continually mounting data is showing that driverless cars are far safer than cars driven by human beings. That will hit premiums in a big way. This one simple savings point could drive more people to driverless cars in the same way that gas prices drive consumers to electric vehicles. Knowing the trends and cycles as Insurance companies create the thought pattern that this situation is being worked on and that a plan to replace the premium revenue with another stream is likely.

Not unlike the insurance companies are local and state governments. This is because with the same data, extrapolating the idea that there will be less tickets from speeding and accidents is almost a no brainer. But unlike insurance companies, it can be fairly certain that governments are not working on this idea. Maybe this article will get them to do so. They should be looking at their revenue models (because that is what ticket revenue really is) and adapt it to future items and personal behaviors in order to replace the loss that not having speeding ticket and accident ticket revenues.  A possibility is to update roads with assistant type technology for the vehicles and charge the vehicle owners for that particular service.

Driverless cars will create an opportunity for consumers to possibly lessen the costs of insurance, energy, and tickets.  These industries would be very wise to have plans on replacing the current revenue with new plans in the pipeline.

Electric and Driverless Vehicles

Electric and Driverless Cars

By Michael Keane

There has been a large progressive move within the car industry in the last decade when it comes to power and ease of transporting. Both of these issues will have a major effect on energy (oil especially), insurance, and local governments  This series of articles will focus on the effects of the moves on these particular industries. It is very important that these industries get ahead of the situation to avoid trouble.

This blog post is the first in a series to cover this topic. It will briefly cover the topics and possible solutions with later posts going into more detail on each topic and solutions to that particular topic. Awareness of the issues at this point is paramount for all involved (industries, customers, etc.) so that nobody can claim ignorance for when a tipping point regarding organizational survival comes upon them. Per disclosure, KeaneVCC has clients who have investments in the car industry, software industry, communications industry, and a bond portfolio that includes local governmental municipal bonds.

At this point, the move to electric vehicles is rolling along well. This past month, Tesla introduced the Model 3. The company has reported that there have already been over 400,000 orders for the car, which indicates a new level of scalability. Nissan, GM, BMW, Toyota, Ford and others are also currently in the market with vehicles.  The prices of electric vehicles are showing up at affordable levels. Competition is growing in the industry and seems to be creating a ceiling on prices. The loss of gas revenue should be a clear red flag for the oil companies. Are they going to sit back with their heads in the sand or will they understand that progressive industries adapt? Government taxing authorities should also take notice as to what the effect will be for them.

To expand on the manner, the movement towards driverless cars is increasing. Leaders in the car, software, and and other industries are committing large amount of resources to this effort. At this point, driverless vehicles have racked up over 1 million miles in planned trips with varied levels of success. Ancillary industries are watching and planning carefully on the progress. Industries that should be paying particular attention are Insurance and local governments. Revenues for both will be affected heavily if driverless cars are adopted.  

**As always, this blog is to be read as opinion. Please do your due diligence before acting on any information read here.**