Back when Elon Musk was running Tesla, he was known for saying that LiDAR technology (basically laser beams that measure distances) was not needed to create full self-driving cars. And that's why their cars instead use a bunch of cameras to monitor the outside world.
Now, I'm not an engineer, but this never made much sense to me. Cameras can only see so far and they certainly can't see at night. So wouldn't laser sensing technology that can see 250-500 meters out — including at night — be greatly preferable when it comes to human safety, even if it costs more?
I'm reminded of what I said to my eye doctor before getting laser eye surgery many years ago: "This is not a transaction where I'm looking to be price sensitive. Get me the absolute best." And that's exactly how I feel when it comes to self-driving cars. I don't care if cameras are pretty good most of the time; I would prefer to have the best.
So which is the best? Damned if I know, but here's an interesting and also hilarious video by YouTuber and engineer Mark Rober where he compares the two technologies: cameras (i.e. Tesla) vs. LiDAR. I won't spoil it for all of you, but his last test is the "Wile E. Coyote test" and it's awesome.
At the time of writing this post, the video already has more than 11 million views and it seems to have been incredibly helpful to Luminar's stock price:
But now the internet is filled with speculation that he deliberately used the video to mislead people regarding Tesla's Full Self Driving capabilities and maybe even to pump's Luminar stock. (Full disclosure: I own a few shares, but this post is in no way any sort of investment advice.) I don't know if this is true or not. But I do think that the cars of the future will all come equipped with LiDAR.
Cover photo by Vlad Tchompalov on Unsplash
In August 2023, when Waymo first launched its self-driving vehicles in San Francisco, the market shares of Uber and Lyft were 66% and 34%, respectively.
By the end of last year, these market shares had dropped to 55% and 22%, respectively, with Waymo on equal footing with Lyft. (These numbers specifically refer to rides that start and end within the boundaries of where Waymo operates and do not, for example, include rides to the airport.)
So the result was low double-digit losses in market share for both companies. This is not all that surprising given that autonomous vehicles are a novel thing and that Waymo's cars seem to be nicer than most Ubers and Lyfts. But it also shows that there maybe isn't a great deal of customer loyalty between the various platforms, that is, as long as the wait times are reasonable.
I think the more difficult questions remain: What does the ride-hailing space look like as AVs become more ubiquitous across our cities? Who is going to own what? And will individual car ownership fall?
We've spoken before about the peak load problem that Waymo faces as a result of owning its own cars. It's expensive to manage a fleet like this, especially relative to Uber's variable supply model. So one scenario remains a close partnership between Waymo and Uber, where Uber handles any above-base spikes in demand with actual humans.
But another scenario might be a hybrid approach where some of the AVs are owned by a ride-hailing company and some are owned by individuals who just contribute them to the network when they don't need them. This is what Tesla has been promising and, who knows, maybe it'll actually happen someday. Reilly Brennan recently wrote about this over here.
Personally, I would love to not own a car. It's also hard to imagine being able to make much money off a car that only goes to work during peak times, when the other robots are too busy. So I'm not convinced of this model. But I can see why Waymo is gaining market share. Privacy and a nicer cleaner vehicle are desirable features.
Cover photo by gibblesmash asdf on Unsplash
Happy new year, everyone! Yesterday we spoke about what actually happened in 2024 (and evaluated my predictions from exactly a year ago). Today, let's prognosticate about what might happen in 2025 (keeping in mind that I'm based in Toronto and so there will naturally be a bias toward this market):
Very broadly speaking, our current commercial real estate downturn started, in my opinion, around the middle of 2022. That's when sentiment started to feel different and the market was starting to respond to increasing interest rates. Over the past few years, I've been overly optimistic in terms of how soon the market would reset. But eventually I'll be right. So I'm going to call 2025 as an important turning point where we see more capitulation, more bankruptcies, and a shedding of legacy assets/deals. For the other side of the market, this will mean more new deals.
This, however, does not mean that we will see a development environment that anywhere resembles what we saw prior to 2022. On the new construction residential side (condominium and multi-family rental specifically), I think it's going to take 2-3 years for us to work through and absorb our current supply pipeline. This will be an obvious headwind for land prices. The successful projects in this environment will be located in core/prime locations, underwritten at more modest scales, and focused largely on end users.
In 2024, we saw the continued rise of more people going back to the office. Here in Toronto, the average weekday figure is approximately 73% of what it was pre-COVID (data from November 2024). This year, I think we'll see this figure get close to 90% and then likely start to level off, some five years after the first lockdowns. I think it makes sense that we'll stabilize at some number below pre-COVID levels, but I also think it'll be a number that is much higher than most people expected just a few years ago.
I am reversing my position on autonomous vehicles (relative to last year). I believe we're much further along -- specifically Waymo is -- than most people think right now. Autonomous vehicles are happening and, in 2025, I think we'll see a significant expansion of coverage across the US led by Waymo + Uber. I don't think we'll see anything earth shattering from Tesla in regards to FSD, but who knows, Elon is good at making things happen. The big test will be cities with snow. This will likely take longer.
At the time of writing this post, the price of EU carbon permits is approximately €71.98 per tonne of carbon dioxide. It's all-time high was €105.73 in February of 2023, but some/many believe that it will need to be closer to €150 by 2030 if the world hopes to reach net zero by 2050. So for this reason, I'm going to say that its price rebounds to between €90-100 this year. This is largely a guess, but I'm including it in my predictions (at least partially) because it's quantifiable and easy to score later.
Crypto and technology more broadly are going to have an awesome year in 2025. As Fred Wilson wrote on his blog yesterday, one of the things we saw in 2024 was "Silicon Valley's hostile takeover of the federal government, via an infiltration of Donald Trump's MAGA movement." The "establishment government" was seen as being antagonistic toward tech and innovation, and so the industry jumped teams. One would expect that to pay dividends this year.
More specifically, I think we're going to see a web3 consumer application that finally breaks into the mainstream. Already, I've been impressed by NFT marketplaces like Rodeo. Many people won't appreciate that it's powered by some blockchain, but that's exactly what we want. We want the underlying technology to recede into the background and for the experience/utility to come into the foreground.
And with that, I will end and leave you all with this recent tweet from Chris Dixon. It's worth clicking through and reading the entire thing.
And so this knowledge will be unfolded…
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A big thank you to everyone who continues to read this blog. We're now into year 12 of this daily writing practice (my first post was in August 2013), and I'm still feeling more inspired than ever. It truly feels like we're at the dawn of so many new and exciting things: a new real estate cycle, an unprecedented innovation environment, and the list goes on. Next up, I'm going to write specifically about what we at Globizen are focused on for this upcoming year.
Cover photo by Tyler Rooney on Unsplash