Yandex, the NASDAQ-listed Russian Internet giant, celebrates 1 million miles driven by its unmanned cars. The company now claims to be “Europe’s largest driverless car developer” and among the top five companies globally, competing with Baidu, Cruise Automation, Uber and Waymo.
Yandex’s driverless cars are currently being experimented on public roads in Moscow and Innopolis (Russia) as well as Tel Aviv (Israel), exposed a variety of climatic and traffic conditions. In early 2019 the cars were also used at the CES in Las Vegas.
With just over 50 driverless cars at the moment, Yandex plans to have 100 engines by the end of this year. These prototypes are currently based on Toyota Priuses, but Yandex has also partnered with Hyundai Mobis as part of its expansion strategy.
A Hyundai-made self-driving Sonata, unveiled recently, will soon join Yandex’s fleet.
From experiment to massive expansion
In an exchange with East-West Digital News, Artem Fokin, head of business development, said that these activity are still at the experimental phase, “like those of other self-driving companies at present, in most cases.”
“This service is not commercialized yet, but we’re ready to charge for rides as soon as the regulations will allow it. Such is the case in Phoenix, where Waymo operates.”
Massive expansion, however, is unlikely to happen before a few years: “This will be possible as soon as driverless cars will drive in big city centers better than humans – which is a matter of technological evolution,” Fokin added.
Yandex plans to log 1,000,000 autonomous miles per week within two years. These self-driving vehicles could generate from 170 million to 1.4 billion rubles in revenues for the company as soon as 2022, believe UBS analysts.
This technology can be monetized in different ways: “It can be used it in ride-hailing and car-sharing services, for example,” said Fokin.
Self-driving cars are pretty expensive for personal use, Fokin conceded, “but they are already cheaper for services like taxi. The cost of a traditional taxi operation includes not only that of the car, but also the cost of the driver – or even two in case of two shifts per day,” he added.
Yandex’s first unmanned car prototype was unveiled in May 2017. The company uses its own technologies, such as mapping, real-time navigation, computer vision and object recognition. Proprietary computing algorithms, artificial intelligence and machine learning “ensure the vehicle’s ability to ‘make decisions’ in complex environments, such as busy city traffic,” the company explained at that time.
