The race for autonomous vehicles took on a new dimension on Tuesday with the alliance of a tech giant with an automotive juggernaut, even if some experts doubt the ability of Microsoft and General Motors (GM) to tackle the problem. pawn to the two current leaders, Waymo (Google) and Tesla.
Read also: Microsoft will invest in the autonomous car subsidiary of General Motors, valued at 30 billion
The computer group Microsoft announced on Tuesday that it was bringing, alongside Honda, GM and other investors, more than $ 2 billion to Cruise, GM's autonomous car subsidiary.
It is now valued at more than 30 billion dollars (25 billion euros).
This
“long-term strategic partnership”
is intended to
“accelerate the commercialization of autonomous vehicles”
, according to a press release, through collaborations at the level of engineering or the cloud (remote computing).
“Microsoft, as a benchmark in the democratization of technology, will help us increase our capabilities to market our fleet of autonomous, fully electric and shared vehicles,”
said Dan Ammann, CEO of Cruise.
The news was well received on the stock market: the title of the automaker jumped more than 9% on Wall Street.
At $ 30 billion, Cruise is worth just under half of GM on the stock market (around $ 76 billion now).
“It wouldn't make sense for either of them to tackle this project alone,”
responded Jessica Caldwell, automotive specialist for Edmunds.
"Microsoft has always been good at making IT accessible to the general public, this is one of their main skills
.
"
But the two companies
"are both enormous, they are not agile and fast start-ups"
, she adds.
Investor interest
A sign of investors' interest in the future of transport, the American company Rivian, which is due to deliver its first large electric vehicles - a pick-up, an SUV and a delivery truck for Amazon - within the year - is now worth 27, $ 6 billion, AFP learned on Tuesday from a source close to the company.
Analysts expect more investments and partnerships in the sector, as years of research and innovation begin to lead to product launches for industry and the general public.
Waymo, a subsidiary of Google, this fall extended its robotaxis service, self-driving cars without a driver, to a larger number of passengers in Phoenix (Arizona), where the company has already been testing its vehicles since 2017.
Read also: Autonomous vehicle: Waymo opens its doors to investors
For its part, Tesla has been testing for a few weeks an improved version of its Autopilot driving assistance software, called "Full Self Driving", with a small group of customers.
The electric vehicle maker has seen its stock market value soar in recent months to nearly $ 800 billion.
"There is a convergence between tech players and car manufacturers, and we think Apple is also on the
verge
of taking the plunge
,
"
notes Dan Ives of Wedbush, who figures the vehicle market. electric and autonomous to 1,000 billion dollars over the next decade.
Enthusiasm measured
"It's likely that Joe Biden's government is heavily subsidizing electric vehicles, and auto groups like GM could benefit,"
added Garrett Nelson of CFRA Research.
Several analysts do not believe in GM's potential against Waymo or Tesla.
"Tesla has a holistic approach, with ecosystems for the software part, for industrial production and for batteries, all linked together in a fluid way"
, underlines Trip Chowdhry of Global Equities Research.
"We cannot just modernize a factory (...) In 5 or 10 years, GM will realize that it made a mistake and Microsoft will have made money"
thanks to the use of Azure, its cloud platform.
But it remains difficult at this stage to determine who will emerge victorious.
The pandemic has reshuffled the cards in the mobility sector a bit - the appetite for public transport has greatly diminished - and not all approaches are comparable.
“GM is a formidable player in autonomous vehicles.
They get less attention than Tesla or Waymo because people think auto makers can't do it.
It's a mistake, ”
comments Morningstar's David Whiston.