Commentary
Waymo Takes Big Lead In Self-Driving Car Patents; GM, Ford Follow
- by Chuck Martin , Staff Writer, November 21, 2017
While Uber and Volvo made noise with their joint deal on self-driving cars this week, neither is tearing up the track when it comes to patents for autonomous vehicles.
Earlier this week, Volvo announced that Uber agreed to buy up to 24,000 self-driving cars from the automaker starting at the beginning of 2019, as I wrote about here (Uber Buying 24,000 Self-Driving Cars From Volvo).
However, a new analysis of the flings of patents relating to autonomous driving show Volvo and Uber both way behind even traditional automakers such as GM, Ford and Honda.
Leading, by a lot, is Alphabet’s Waymo, with the Google parent’s team racking up more than 2,000 patents filed, according to the analysis by LEK Consulting.
The closest to Waymo in patent filings is GM, with around half as many, with Volvo and Uber not even in the same ballpark.
Volvo has filed 430 patents and Uber 66. Tesla has barely a handful. Here’s the breakdown of patents filed by company, according to TEK:
- 2,118 – Waymo
- 1,160 – GM
- 944 – Ford
- 870 – Honda
- 809 – Hyundai
- 716 – Toyota
- 620 – Daimler
- 604 – Nissan
- 535 – Volkswagen
- 430 – Volvo
- 401 – Mitsubishi
- 159 – Renault
- 66 – Uber
- 39 – Mazda
- 10 -- BMW
- 5 -- Tesla
Patents or not, the Uber deal to get 24,000 self-driving cars is still one of the largest to date.
Depending on who ends up using which technologies, Google’s parent yet again may be in a prime position to cash in, this time on licensing fees.
Chuck Martin is Editor of the AI & IoT Daily at MediaPost and writes the daily Connected Thinking column. He is a NY Times Business bestselling author and his latest book is “Digital Transformation 3.0” (The New Business-to-Consumer Connections of The Internet of Things.) He is CEO of Net Future Institute and a frequent keynote speaker internationally. Follow him on Twitter @chuckmartin and contact him at Chuck@MediaPost.com.
Just sitting back watching the billions of dollars wasted on this nonsense.
First, who wants to be seen in a vehicle that looks like the Ghost Buster hearse?
What about the car that debted in Vegas a month ago that crashed in 2 hours?
Uber might be the big winner here to go driverless because apparently they don't have
enough technology sources to vet their drivers on criminal background checks. Just got an $8,600,000. fine in Colorado. AND STILL, no one EVER says how much these clusters of plastic circuit boards add to the price of the car .
Good points, Mark. Looks like first uses will not be personal but rather businesses deploying them essentially as driverless taxis.