KiwiRide - Owning the Driverless Future

Andrew Atkin:

As I have stressed so often, all we need for a driverless revolution to begin is for a tiny Twizy car to be able to send itself to the next customer; with the rider, at first, driving actively when in it. No serious safety concerns - we can easily do this today. So the driverless revolution should be a soon-to-be tomorrow revolution.

Replacing Uber, ride-sharing, eliminating most parking needs, the need for private ownership, and replacing conventional public transport except for where it's needed in high-capacity corridors.

However, we need to ask ourselves if the driverless systems of tomorrow--almost certainly dominated by either Waymo or GM--will form a natural monopoly, like Facebook? Once one system gains the dominant market, will it become the (virtual) exclusive system?

That's a big and pertinent question, because if New Zealand imports Waymo's driverless system, and it dominates 70% of land transport demand overnight (yes it probably will), then we risk exporting massive monopoly money to Waymo or GM for nothing, of which we cannot practically escape, because the nature of the "driverless Uber" format is to evolve quickly towards monopoly.

Solution? Probably the most practical thing to do, is to treat the system as a public utility. If it's going to be a natural monopoly then it might be best to make it public.

One model is for New Zealand to adopt Waymo's system as a franchise. Pay Waymo a fair royalty, and let New Zealand own and manage the system within their country, to the most practical degree possible.

In this scenario, New Zealand will not directly benefit from competition advancing driverless systems, but this does not have to be a concern. New Zealand is so small that its capacity to innovate with this kind of costly technology is limited regardless, and New Zealand can still, quite simply, observe winning forma's that other countries have developed and import those innovations as time goes on.

So that is my argument. New Zealand could be wise to own their own "KiwiRide" development, and work directly with Waymo today to develop New Zealand's roading infrastructure, to make Waymo work best for a New Zealand context. Again, if it's going to be a natural monopoly--and it probably will--then making it a public utility might well be the best way to go.

Included is a great video that highlights the point.