Endless Corporate Plans on the Horizon

So many plans out there being boasted of that I'm going to leave out details. Hoping this is the bottom of the pile and that I will not have any driverless catching up to do for a while. Really, the news should wait for when I have time to read it. Some of this is current and some from the last few weeks. Funny though that the media takes much longer to catch up, so still timely.

Great minds and herds - thinking alike

Uber to launch driverless taxi/publicly-available transport in Arizona. No backup driver necessary from the report, though we will see if that changes. At this point, an Arizona executive order (which can be quickly yanked or changed), not legislation, permits driverless bots to roam without a backup driver. 

Mercedes is considering following the same path as Uber. The swanky car company is planning a driverless limousine/taxi service, perhaps fancier than the more taxi-like bot service than Uber envisions. Mercedes does not want to be left behind when the Google and Uber driverless bots hit the road. Corporately related to Car2Go, by way of Daimler, Mercedes has a built-in advantage due to the on-demand experience of its corporate cousin.

BMW is considering the same, but it has no actual plans. However, the company is seeing ridehailing a la Uber as the future, with three-minute wait times.

Hire one person and speculation runs amok

What is Google going to do? The tea leaf readers are having fun after the recent Google hire of an automobile executive to lead its driverless car project. The new guy, John Krafcik, was at Ford and Hyundai before going to a now-failing online car dealership. Google is also ramping up driverless car production, so speculation continues about whether the company is preparing to mass produce its driverless pods. (Randomly, interchangeably using the terms bots and pods. Terminology is fluid at this early stage of the driverless revolution.)

Apple speculation heats up with meeting between executives and California DMV. Are they or aren't they? And what exactly is Apple building? Where will they test it?

Yes, if you are up on driverless news, that week-or-so old update is old.

And I have not even gotten to today's driverless news. Other work keeps getting in the way.