Business models will drive the future of autonomous vehicles

S. Somasegar is managing director at Madrona Venture Group and the former head of Microsoft's Developer Division. Daniel Li is an investor with Madrona Venture Group. "The technology is essentially here… We have machines that can make a bunch of quick decisions that could drastically reduce traffic fatalities, drastically improve the efficiency of our transportation grid, and help solve things like carbon emissions that are causing the warming of the planet." Interestingly, this statement didn't come from a futurist like Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos; this was President Obama discussing autonomous vehicles in an interview with WIRED last fall. Over the last year, we have seen many groundbreaking announcements regarding autonomous cars, from companies like Ford promoting its autonomous vehicle leader to the position of CEO, to Tesla's NHSTA investigation showing a 40 percent decrease in accidents with Autopilot enabled and Audi beginning mass-market sales of a "Level 3" autonomous car. Nevertheless, many questions in the world of autonomous vehicles remain unanswered.