Both car-sharing and autonomous vehicles (or should I say semi-autonomous vehicles) are becoming more and more widespread. But relatively speaking, we're still  in the very early stages of both of these industries. On one hand, you have companies like Google and Tesla, who aren't just building autonomous cars anymore, but now even semi-trucks, and on the other hand there are car-sharing companies like Car2Go, whose business model seems a bit more achievable in the near term. How are these technologies going to play out over the next 5-10 years? Can these two industries both grow together? Are these industries competing with each other, or do they compliment one another?

Helbiz and DAV

I want to start by talking about these two companies who are going about reshaping each of their respective industries. Helbiz for vehicle-sharing, and DAV for, well, decentralized autonomous vehicles.

Helbiz, the Airbnb of the car-sharing industry, is aiming to transform the car-sharing space and make it much more feasible for everyone to rent vehicles or allow their vehicles to be rented. There's a lot of barriers right now in the car-sharing industry that are preventing car-sharing companies from growing. As you probably know, car-sharing is very regional in nature. Car-sharing companies like Car2Go for example decide to set up shop in certain select cities. Expanding to a new city is a major investment for them - they need personnel, a whole bunch of cars (for economies of scale within that city), car parking lots, parking agreements with the city, insurance in the state/province/municipality, and they have to ensure they're complying with regional regulatory requirements such as registration. It's a pretty big investment in both time and especially money. 

Given the investment, they also want to make sure they have a large enough user base to support demand. That knocks many smaller cities out of contention automatically, in addition to towns of course. And the country-side? You must be joking. Car-sharing just isn't feasible to expand there. It's no wonder why it's commonplace for each adult member of the household to have a car.

Helbiz's idea in a nutshell is to allow users to rent out their vehicles to others, kind of like Uber has done for Taxis. However, Helbiz uses blockchain technology to secure their network and payments go through the Helbiz Mobility platform. I have discussed the more technical side of Helbiz over here, so I don't want to delve into much detail here as I want to focus on what the future of the industry will look like.

Simply put, Helbiz is going to be able to expand the car-sharing market in ways that traditional car-sharing companies just can't compete. Helbiz will be far more efficient, allowing the renter to rent directly from the car owner, and have transactions secured by the blockchain. Helbiz will be able to expand at ease since they don't need to invest in all sorts of infrastructure to get up and running in a new location - all as they need are vehicle owners, who will already have purchased the vehicles of course. Helbiz will have far less need for personnel and is poised to overthrow the car-sharing industry just as Uber has overthrown the taxi industry. They'll make companies like Car2Go and Zipcar look like relics. But that's IF car-sharing takes off.

On the other side of the coin, we have autonomous vehicles. Before we continue, ask yourself these question: 

1. Will the future of transportation be autonomous or will transportation continue to be controlled in large part by people?

2. Are these two sides are competitors with one another of which one side will largely end up 'winning', or can both sides succeed?

A LOT of money is getting put behind autonomous driving technology by heavyweights like google, facebook, tesla & uber right now. These companies don't just believe autonomous driving is the future. They're investing so much, they know it's the future.

Lots of people doubt autonomous driving technology will ever become good enough to be implemented on roads, as people always worry about the technology 'missing' and obstacle - after all every once in a while we hear about a bad accident involving an autonomous vehicle. But these accidents are few and far between. More and more people believe autonomous driving technology is in the near future going to be both practical and safe.

The doubt about whether autonomous driving will really take hold has two major obstacles at this point

1. Compliance, Regulatory & Legal. Will governments sanction autonomous vehicles on passenger roads? How will the insurance be handled and who will take liability in the event of an accident?

2. Do people really want autonomous vehicles? Yes, it might be cool to have your parcels delivered by a drone, but when it comes to transporting yourself from point A to point B, don't people enjoy driving sometimes? Would they be willing to give that up permanently and be willing to be transported by an autonomous vehicle?

IF autonomous driving really takes hold DAV appears poised to be a major player in that market. Developing the autonomous driving technology is only half the battle. One thing the developers aren't dealing with is how end-users can go about hiring a car.

DAV creates a platform for both vehicles, users, third party service provider, drones, and even charging stations to interact among one another. It enables users to get on demand delivery services with autonomous vehicles, whether personal transport, or transportation of goods. Owners of the vehicles will be able to rent them out for use on the platform and get paid for it. I've gone over some of the more technical aspects of how DAV works in an article over here so I won't bother rehashing it here

Can Helbiz and DAV Co-Exist?

Ultimately, the answer the answer to this question depends on if people WANT to keep driving themselves, or if they're happy to have autonomous vehicles do all the driving for me. In all likelihood, there will be a market for both in the near future. DAV has the more difficult path of the two as it relies on a lot of new technology that simply doesn't exist quite yet. For that reason, in the near term, Helbiz may end up being the larger of the two, but come 10-15 years, DAV may end up leaving other companies in the dust if consumers truly embrace autonomous vehicle technology fully.