The AV Industry Searches for a Near-Term Business Case

The TechCrunch Sessions at San Jose's Mobility 2019 conference advance the dialogue for real-world business cases for AVs.

An impressive lineup of the world's leading autonomous vehicle (AV) companies gathered in San Jose for the TechCrunch Sessions: Mobility 2019 conference. Technologists, executives and transportation experts took to the stage of the California Theater, a beautifully restored 1920s-era motion-picture house. The venue has a long legacy of presenting fantastical movies, operas, and vaudeville shows. However, the day-long, back-to-back 20-minute conversations on stage struck a note of hyper-realism.

Executives from Aptive, Aurora, Mobileye, Uber, Waymo and other companies mostly dodged questions about when self-driving technology will reach maturity. Instead, the dominant theme was the search for practical, near-term and profitable ways to solve real mobility problems. The presenters on the TechCrunch stage who seemed the most comfortable with the shift in message from revolution to evolution are working on well-defined use cases and business models.