Investing in Self-Driving Cars

The International Consumer Electronics Show has never really been the best place for car manufacturers to show off their new technologies.

Year after year, dozens of cars roll into the North Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center, and automakers attempt big spectacles of their newest electronic features to stoke business and excitement.

These don’t often become the hot stories of the year, and they usually take a place behind some gadget that steals the show.

As time passes, however, the line between car and computer is getting blurrier. Cars are starting to become the mainstream “tech” that is the highlight of CES.

And why not? Every year, cars gain more computing power than horsepower, and some high concepts aren’t far from becoming real.

Based upon this year’s presentations, one thing is certain: Germany is leading the self-driving car revolution. Mercedes-Benz, Audi, BMW, and Volkswagen all came to CES 2015 to show off their self-driving capabilities.

BMW (OTC: BAMXF)

German carmaker BMW is showing off a modified version of its i3 electric car that parks itself.

The feature is called Remote Valet Parking Assistant, and the driver can send his car off to park itself with an app on his smartwatch. Retrieving the car is as easy as talking into your watch, kind of like what David Hasselhoff used to do with his Pontiac Trans-Am in the ’80s TV series Knight Rider.

Using a combination of GPS mapping, four laser sensors, and a heap of algorithms, the BMW i3 can avoid collisions and navigate tight parking structures.

Volkswagen (OTC: VLKAY)

Like BMW, Volkswagen is showing off an assisted parking feature on a prototype called the Golf R Touch.

The interesting thing about Volkswagen’s system is that it essentially stores common driving patterns in the memory of the car. With a forward-facing camera, the system detects repeated visits to the same location, such as your home parking space, and subsequently learns the pattern.

After enough training, the car can do the parking itself. Eventually, it will allow the driver to exit the car and execute the parking maneuver from his smartphone or watch. It’s a novel solution to autonomous parking.

Audi (OTC: AUDVF)

Audi, meanwhile, is well ahead of BMW and Volkswagen. It debuted an assisted parking feature two years ago at CES.

This year, it is making an even more spectacular display of its self-driving capabilities. The company is driving its prototype A7 Sportback all the way from San Francisco to its CES setup in Las Vegas.

The 550-mile journey is being taken to show off “Piloted Driving,” a feature somewhat like autopilot in an airplane. The feature uses radar, laser scanners, and 3D cameras to automate highway driving.

The feature isn’t robust enough to handle city driving, so the prototype car requires a driver to be sitting behind the wheel to tackle the more difficult surface street driving.

This functionality, which bridges the gap between cruise control and self-driving cars, could help ease the average driver into comfort with vehicular autonomy.

Mercedes-Benz

On Monday, Mercedes debuted a concept sedan that made Audi’s assisted driving system look downright conservative. The F-015 “Luxury in Motion” is a concept car that has completely redesigned the cabin space to cater to passengers who don’t need to watch the road.

This self-driving car has an inside similar to a limousine, where the passengers face each other rather than the road ahead of them.

Obviously, this car is nowhere near production-ready and exists more to capture our imagination about the next generation of cars.

“The car is growing beyond its role as a mere means of transport and will ultimately become a mobile living space,” Daimler AG Chairman and head of Mercedes-Benz Dr. Dieter Zetsche said at the car’s debut event.

America?

As of right now, American car companies are lagging behind Germans in the creation of “mobile living spaces.”

The American companies really leading this market aren’t in automotives at all, but instead are pure tech companies like Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA), and Intel (NASDAQ: INTC). Each is working on its own platform for management, software, and components for self-driving cars.

Good Investing,

Tim Conneally

 @TimConneally on Twitter

For the last seven years, Tim Conneally has covered the world of mobile and wireless technology, enterprise software, network hardware, and next generation consumer technology. Tim has previously written for long-running software news outlet Betanews and for financial media powerhouse Forbes.