The Reality of Automotive News 2018 Predictions
At the end of 2017, Automotive News wrote an article about its predictions for the automotive industry in 2018. We thought it would be fun to see how close they got with these predictions, so let’s take a look to see how they played out.
1. Uber will have a quiet year.
Mostly this one was true. It settled its data breach suit for $148 mill and sold its sector in Southeast Asia to Grab. Uber continued its work on autonomous cars, which did grab a few headlines with Toyota’s investment in the technology. The one major story that came out about Uber was the tragic death of a woman in March after being hit by one of the brand’s self-driving vehicles.
Otherwise, it was a pretty quiet year for the brand as its new CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, as they prepared to go public and increased safety standards for its users and drivers. We are sure to see big moves from Uber in 2019.
2. Lyft will be spread too thin with commitments.
Well after adding several large investors in 2017 Lyft filed a draft registration for its IPO with the Securities Exchange Commission in December 2018. As it rushes to beat Uber to market, it seems to be a last-ditch effort to stay competitive in this changing and growing market.
With New York recently putting a cap on the number of rideshare vehicles in the city, we have to wonder if other large cities will follow in its path. (Or will Uber win the lawsuit, overturning everything?) And, how will it affect the industry further.
3. Automakers will scale back self-driving plans.
The first half of the year, this may have been true. After the woman mentioned above was killed, the topic of autonomous vehicles died down for a bit. But by August Toyota was investing $500 million into Uber’s project, and in October Honda and GM partnered up. More partnerships followed. It doesn’t look like interest in this technology is going away any time soon.
While GM plans to have a car with no steering wheel or pedals by the end of 2019, but we will see. It’s hard to say if consumers will even be interested in this product. Various studies show that only half of people show some interest. Others show that 75 percent of people would never get in a self-driving car. Just because we can doesn’t necessarily mean we should. Anyone else watch “Silicon Valley”? Nobody wants to end up like Jared.
4. Chinese EV startups will appear in more headlines
The prediction was that 2018 would be the last year we didn’t have Chinese EVs in the U.S. Well as trade issues still swirl around with no end in sight, this is likely untrue. A trade agreement isn’t the only problem. According to an article in the LA Times, “Chinese automakers have tried to enter the U.S. market before and failed, crippled by sub-par quality, failure to meet tough U.S. safety standards, lack of consumer awareness and ill-conceived import partnerships.” It goes on to say that these plans are “hopelessly optimistic.”
It also seems that China has its own EV battle to be won as Tesla breaks into the Chinese market (charging $20k more for its vehicle than in the US, I may add). There are several Chinese startups hoping to gain traction in the US, but 2018 definitely wasn’t their year. And, 2019 isn’t looking great either.
5. Tesla will continue to miss production goals.
Saying it would produce 500,000 Model 3s in 2018 was definitely a pipe dream. An article from Bloomberg that’s updated nearly daily estimates that a whopping 221,517 have been produced to date. That’s less than half of what was promised in 2018 alone. Tesla continues to struggle by obviously spreading itself too thin. As we recently discussed, the future of the automaker is unclear.
Automotive News got three out of five. That’s pretty good in our book. We wonder what is in store for 2019 as technology and trade become the center of the industry.
