In 2019, Volkswagen added another $2.6 billion worth of investment, of which $1 billion is cash investment, and 1.6 billion is the integration of Volkswagen's autonomous driving technology company AID into Argo AI, and reached a cooperation with the US online ride-hailing platform Lyftt, hoping to launch Robotaxi.
Argo AI, supported by Ford and Volkswagen, received at least US$3.6 billion in investment in three years, with a valuation of as high as US$7 billion and a team size of up to 2,000 people.
burned all out US$2.6 billion, Ford lost more than 800 million
However, Argo AI is progressing slowly in autonomous driving technology, and Robotaxi, which cooperates with Lyft, has not been implemented.
In addition to the project's unsuccessful progress, Argo AI was also exposed to lay off about 150 employees in July this year, accounting for about 6% of the company's more than 2,000 employees. All the $2.6 billion raised before was burned out.
In addition, Ford Motor, which spent a huge investment in Argo AI, also suffered losses this year. According to the financial report, Ford's revenue in the third quarter of 2022 was US$39.4 billion, with increasing 10% year-on-year; net loss reached US$827 million. In response, Ford Motor explained that this is because investments in Argo AI have recorded $2.7 billion in non-cash pre-tax impairment.
Faced with the pressure of losses and electro-vaporization transformation, Volkswagen has stated that it will no longer continue to increase its investment in Argo AI and will promote the creation of intelligent driving systems through cooperation; Ford also said that its current top priority is to create excellent L2+ and L3 systems to enhance the competitiveness of smart car .
industry is developing slowly, and it may achieve trillions of revenue in the future
Looking around the world, the autonomous driving industry is still in the experimental stage, with a variety of fields involved, huge demand for funds, long R&D time, and huge cost consumption, so it has shown a slow development industry trend. Industry insiders also said that under the influence of the epidemic, the investment suppliers are directly affected, and the implementation cycle of autonomous driving technology is relatively long, and a large amount of capital investment is required in the early and mid-term returns are low, which has reduced the investment enthusiasm of the autonomous driving industry compared with the second half of last year.
In addition to the decline in investment enthusiasm, autonomous driving companies are also facing many crises. For example, Aurora, which completed its backdoor listing at the end of last year, will reduce costs by laying off employees and reducing benefits in August this year to overcome the current dilemma of not being able to make ends meet. Its market value has also dropped from its highest $20 billion to its current $2.5 billion. Even Robotaxi's leader Waymo has encountered similar problems, with its valuation shrinking from $175 billion to today's tens of billions.
However, as an inevitable trend in the future automotive development, global management consulting firm McKinsey once predicted that global annual revenue related to autonomous vehicles in urban areas may reach US$1.6 trillion by 2030.
