Driverless Cars: Positioning for Competitive Advantage

This assignment discusses how driverless cars have positioned themselves for gaining competitive advantage, the relevant aspects of the technology, their response to the market, and their changing position in recent years. It also explores what driverless cars need to do to succeed in the next 2-5 years.

Running head: COMPUTER INFORMATION SYSTEM
COMPUTER INFORMATION SYSTEM
Name of Student
Name of University
Author’s Note

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Table of Contents
Introduction..........................................................................................................................2
Discussion............................................................................................................................2
How driverless cars have positioned itself for gaining competitive advantage...............2
Aspects relevant to the technology..................................................................................3
How it has responded to the market................................................................................4
How its position has changed in recent years..................................................................4
What it needs to do to succeed in this sector in next 2-5 years.......................................5
Conclusion...........................................................................................................................6
References............................................................................................................................8

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Introduction
IT technology has introduced various innovations such as driverless cars, XB-1
Supersonic, XploR and many more. The technology that has been chosen for this assignment
includes driverless cars. Driverless cars have changed the way people get around. A driverless
car can be defined as a vehicle which can operate without the help of humans (Bates 2017). It is
able to guide itself without any conduction of humans; they have become concrete reality and
might make a way for the future systems in which computers take over the driving of humans.
Driverless cars are also known as autonomous cars, driverless cars, self-driving cars, robot cars
or autonomous vehicles (Zhang, Chen and Zhan 2018). This assignment described regarding the
ways with which this innovation has positioned itself for attempting a decent gain of competitive
advantage. Some aspects that are relevant to this technology such as pricing, features, functions,
core processors, speed and brand values have been discussed. The way it responds to the market
and how its position has changed in recent years, have also been discussed.
Discussion
How driverless cars have positioned itself for gaining competitive advantage
The technology that is being used behind the concept of driverless cars is still
development and testing. It can offer a decent level of competitive advantage for the business
after it is commercially available (Schlossberg, Millard-Ball and Shay 2018). The ways by which
the technology has positioned itself for this advantage are as follows

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Product differentiation: the driverless cars are differentiating itself from the presently
used traditional cars in a particular sense that the requirement of human driver is eliminated
virtually.
Low cost: the cost of production of the wireless cars is aimed to be lowered in accordance
with the Moore’s Law (Riggs 2018). These cars have been aimed in maximizing the efficiency of
fuels used; this would offer a specific amount of incentive for the customers for picking this
product.
Establishing the entry barrier: Google has the ability to patent the technology as well as
license it out to the organizations that they have chosen (Lipson and Kurman 2016). Innovation
in this specific market, Google is reaping the benefits of becoming the distributor of the
technology of self-driving.
Aspects relevant to the technology
There are various factors that are related to the technology and which must be considered
as important which carrying out a detailed study on this concept. Some features are as follows
Pricing: pricing of the driverless cars might vary on the basis of its mileage, the present
estimation of has been that the cost incurred in the hardware and software package for
manufacturing these cars might range from $70,000 to $ 150,000, it has been estimated that the
cost of the autonomous driving stack by the year 2025 might lessen to around $5,000 (Ryan
2017). The cost of the cars might range from $35,000 for 220 mile range to $44,000 for 310 mile
range.
Features and functions: some features that the driverless cars have include overnight
travelling, design similar to lounge style, solar power, and more space for loving room,
completely windshield augmented reality systems, energy efficiencies, in vehicle payments,

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pattern recognition as well as customization, enhanced safety and Artificial intelligence inspired
perks (Tettamanti, Varga and Szalay 2016).
Speed: driverless cars are usually designed for following the speed limits, but the vehicle
can maintain a speed of 70 meters per second (Gora and Rüb 2016). A speed limited would be
implemented in these cars for safety purposes. Some aspects that must be concentrated in this
aspect are vehicle dynamics, average speed of the commute and ECU speed limiter.
Brand values: brand values in driverless cars matter the most because the trustworthy
brands like Google would be preferred more than many more brands.
How it has responded to the market
The introduction of driverless cars has responded in numerous ways to the market. It has
provided various advantages as well as disadvantages to the people. The advantages include
better security of the passengers, following traffic guidelines in an effective manner and many
more. There have been numerous disadvantages provided by the autonomous cars which have
created fatal accidents (Claudel and Ratti 2015). Recently there have been two accidents where
self-driving cars were involved, the cars were by Tesla and Uber, and they did not lead to a
major backlash that had been predicted by most of the people. These accidents have increased
the people’s concerns regarding the safety of the cars. People do not seem to trust driverless cars
because in some situation that raises certain dilemmas it would be difficult for the autonomous
cars to take fruitful decisions. A self-driving car would prevent several accidents whereas cause
some accidents, this distribution of safety on both the sides contrasts with many more product
categories like microwaves, electric drills and many more (Clark, Parkhurst and Ricci 2016).
From a certain perspective, these products are preferable over other products that have only one

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sided distribution. These vehicles result in aligning the safety goals along with the development
goals because safety goals are to be considered while fulfilling the development goals.
How its position has changed in recent years
The application of the technology has changes as we have advanced towards the actual
reality of the driverless cars. Various strategies are used for allowing the vehicles to understand
the environment around them in a specific dynamic environment of driving. These vehicles have
been programmed in a way that they are able to act in the response to various changes in the
environment (Legacy, Ashmore & Scheurer 2019). The vehicles usually need a huge range of
technologies as well as infrastructure in order to operate in an effective manner. The vehicles are
required to collect as well as interpret huge amount of data. The vehicles have been designed in a
better way than they were designed previously. They are designed in such a way that they work
in cooperation with the environment in surrounding and various technological advancements are
implemented to ensure that the vehicles are capable of working within various contexts like
LIDAR (laser scan), cameras, long range radar, short or a radar of medium-range and ultrasound
(Marres 2018). The technologies are used in various capacities on the basis of specific need of
vehicles. These technologies have also been designed such that they are able to work with
various signals that are made for the humans such as safety cones; this is done so that the
automakers require considering robots as well as humans at the same time.
An example of this includes, that the cameras receive the visual data in order to help the
software of the car in determining the traffic signals and cross various traffic warnings.
Ultrasound is used for informing regarding the immediate environment for the parking assistance
(Bissell, Birtchnell and Elliott 2018). These technologies help in collecting different data for the

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vehicle and on the basis of this data collected; the car makes interpretations, then makes the
proper response for that particular situation.
What it needs to do to succeed in this sector in next 2-5 years
There are various factors that need to be considered for driverless cars in order to achieve
success in their next 2 to 5 years. These factors are as follows
Laws and customs: the main issues that can be faced by this field might be the change in
social, legal and political norms in driving. In this case, the question that arises is that whose
fault is it if the driverless car breaks the law? (De Bruyne and Werbrouck 2018). Is it the driver
who should be held responsible or the manufacturer who has not included the norms? Hence this
is the area that needs to be improved in order to succeed.
The decision making skills: the decision making skills must be improved in these
vehicles because there have been cases in which the vehicle had faced dilemma while taking
decisions, this has resulted in either technical failure of the vehicle or undertaking a decision that
is unethical, hence the decision making skills of these vehicles must be improved.
Knowledge within people: people must be provided with enough knowledge regarding
the functions of the vehicles or the way they can be utilized effectively (Aljulayfi and Djemame
2018). Lack of knowledge in people would make in ineffective for the brands to invest a lump
sum of money in the project.
Conclusion
From the above assignment, it can be concluded that the autonomous cars have not yet
been commercially available on the large scale, the driverless cars along with Google’s
autonomous car design had reported to log hundreds of hours on the roads of America. These

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cars make use of various technologies; they are usually built with the GPS sensing knowledge in
order to help the vehicle with navigation. They usually use sensors as well as some other
equipment for avoiding collisions. They also have the capability of utilizing various range of
technology such as augmented reality in which the vehicle would be able to display information
to the drivers in innovating and new ways. In this assignment, the ways by which driverless cars
have positioned it for gaining competitive advantage has been mentioned, it also discusses
regarding the way it has responded in the market and the way its position has changed in the
market. Further it discusses regarding the steps that it needs to follow in order to succeed in this
sector in next 2 to 5 years.

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References
Aljulayfi, A.F. and Djemame, K., 2018, October. Simulation of an augmented reality application
for driverless cars in an edge computing environment. In 2018 Fifth International Symposium on
Innovation in Information and Communication Technology (ISIICT) (pp. 1-8). IEEE.
Bates, J., 2017. How far is the law of tort ready to adapt to driverless cars?.
Bissell, D., Birtchnell, T., Elliott, A. and Hsu, E.L., 2018. Autonomous automobilities: The
social impacts of driverless vehicles. Current Sociology, p.0011392118816743.
Clark, B., Parkhurst, G. and Ricci, M., 2016. Introducing Driverless Cars to UK Roads.
Claudel, M. and Ratti, C., 2015. Full speed ahead: How the driverless car could transform
cities. McKinsey & Company, August, 14.
De Bruyne, J. and Werbrouck, J., 2018. Merging self-driving cars with the law. Computer law &
security review, 34(5), pp.1150-1153.
Gora, P. and Rüb, I., 2016. Traffic models for self-driving connected cars. Transportation
Research Procedia, 14, pp.2207-2216.
Legacy, C., Ashmore, D., Scheurer, J., Stone, J. and Curtis, C., 2019. Planning the driverless
city. Transport Reviews, 39(1), pp.84-102.
Lipson, H. and Kurman, M., 2016. Driverless: intelligent cars and the road ahead. Mit Press.
Marres, N., 2018. What if nothing happens? Street trials of intelligent cars as experiments in
participation. TechnoScience in Society, Sociology of Knowledge Yearbook.
Riggs, W. ed., 2018. Disruptive Transport: Driverless Cars, Transport Innovation and the
Sustainable City of Tomorrow. Routledge.
Ryan, C., 2017. Driverless Cars: Preparing for the Impact on the Automobile Insurance Industry.

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Schlossberg, M., Millard-Ball, A., Shay, E. and Riggs, W.B., 2018. Rethinking the street in an
era of driverless cars.
Tettamanti, T., Varga, I. and Szalay, Z., 2016. Impacts of autonomous cars from a traffic
engineering perspective. Periodica Polytechnica Transportation Engineering, 44(4), pp.244-250.
Zhang, X., Chen, M. and Zhan, X., 2018, April. A combined approach to single-camera-based
lane detection in driverless navigation. In 2018 IEEE/ION Position, Location and Navigation
Symposium (PLANS) (pp. 1042-1046). IEEE.