Part 3 — Use-case-driven Alliance
Due to the complex and evolving landscape of the AV Industry at present, we must look deeper at each company in order to understand how the Data sub-tier specifically feeds into the AV Value Chain. This can be done by starting at the top of the value chain and drilling-down to draw a more detailed picture of the company’s alliance strategy.
Here is the third corresponding alliance model characterized by McKinsey that can help depict how data will be fed into the AV Value Chain:
3. Use-case-driven Alliance
An example of this alliance model is currently Uber, which has created a separate entity called the Uber Advanced Technologies Group. Their “self-driving strategy centers around partnership” as they are tackling the AV race by combining their self-driving technology “with partners’ state-of-the-art vehicles, sensors, and technology”. In these circumstances, the company has the economies of scale to vertically integrate some of the AV hardware and software solutions. Nevertheless, as the focus is on creating more value through partnerships we will venture into how the value chain could be constructed in this circumstance if everything was provided externally. The goal is to leverage the manufacturing capabilities of multiple OEMs which will execute the mobility service providers vision of the AV. Uber would work closely with Tier 2 Suppliers of AV Hardware and Software in order to create its AV System. If the Tier 2 Supplier was a company similar to Waymo, they would have already tackled the data collection and management solutions. If not, Uber would have to work directly with its Tier 2 Suppliers to find the best data collection and management solutions to integrate with its AV System. In terms of cloud and on-prem data storage solutions, these would most likely be sourced by Uber as they would retain ownership of the data. Lastly, the Data Labelling solutions would be outsourced most probably — in this case, Uber is also working with Scale.
In each of these scenarios the driver of the technology definition is the one controlling the alliance which means they are ultimately responsible for ensuring the data challenges are being dealt with through integrating the right data solutions from the data sub-tier. Whoever that turns out to be, we believe they will attract the largest market share in the mobility value chain.
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