Waymo good news for Seeing Machines: part 2

Interest from US investors in Driver Monitoring is set to take off as it is becoming clear that it offers the means to prevent the deadly death toll on US roads.

Adam Jonas, Morgan Stanley’s star auto analyst, published a note on 24 March, 2021, entitled: ‘What’s on My Mind? Motor Vehicle Safety — A New ESG Frontier’.

In that note he cited a recent report from the National Safety Council (NSC) in which it detailed that despite an historic fall in miles travelled and safer vehicle designs, the number of US motor vehicle related deaths in 2020 hit a 13-year high of 42,600.

Also, according to the study, for every US road death there are 114 ‘medically consulted injuries’, resulting in nearly 4.8m vehicle-related injuries last year.

That represents a huge, avoidable cost to its society, which the NSC calculates at a staggering US$474bn, or roughly 2.2% of US GDP.

Given that cost, Jonas writes: “We believe such tragic statistics may accelerate a range of policies (at the Federal level and otherwise) that may in turn accelerate changes of key ADAS technologies in the US fleet.” He adds: “The average age of a car in the US is over 12 years, amongst the highest of any developed nation in the world. We have long discussed the potential for taypayer/policy actions to accelerate the scrapping and replacement of US vehicles.”

His takeaway is that, while there has been plenty of focus on the climate-related impact of today’s vehicle tech: “We see scope for greater attention to be paid to life-saving/ADAS/autonomous related technology.”

Fortunately, Seeing Machines is at centre of this life-saving technology and interest from US investors is clearly accelerating. 

Moreover, as more and more vehicles are driven in the US with its tech (Ford F-150 and Mach-e, as well as GM Cadillacs) interest will only grow.

Waymo

This will of course be helped by Seeing Machines publicly acknowledging its involvement and RNSing such news. For example, as Colin Barnden of Semicast Research confirmed in an article this week, it has supplied its tech to Waymo.

This blog first wrote about Seeing Machines supplying Waymo back in 2018, still it is about time we had it confirmed via an official RNS — especially given the announcement by Colin Barnden. 

Regardless, I expect Seeing Machines to be rerated imminently (not a word beloved of its investors) as more US investors and analysts realise it is not a jam tomorrow stock but a jam factory gearing up production.

The writer holds stock in Seeing Machines.

 

       

 

 

         

     

    

     

    

    

    

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