New Post from Tech Maven Fritz Maffry

Here, Fritz Maffry offers these observations of a few of the tech giants:

Bosch

..is doing some wonderful things. After having been implicated in the emissions fiasco of the European diesel purposeful cheat, Bosch is making powerful headway. As a leader in tools, they are scaling up based on common battery packs. This is not your little tool kit though; this is scaling up to increasingly bigger shared systems. Think lawn tractor and other power equipment…and it is just started. With the battery reusable and transferable, this becomes comparatively economic to traditional small gas engines. Expect a major shift, with outdoor work becoming much quieter, safer, and lower maintenance. It shows the way forward for even larger scale transference to construction, mining, and farm equipment. Flexibility and interoperability by design and swappable formats mean very little downtime. The noise pollution alone being diminished, and the improvement in working conditions for employees and neighborhoods is remarkable. This should be scrutinized: why do we allow noisy activities when economic quiet ones are easily available as options?

Then there is the effort by Bosch in electric bikes, with their drive, battery pack, and display instruments. They catalyzed a huge movement towards advanced electric bikes, now embraced by dozens of competing manufacturers, but Bosch is still the driving pace setter. If you haven’t seen how far electric bikes have come in power, silence, ease of use, integration, reliability you are in for a shock.

Now Bosch is working on autonomous trials in Europe, they have big ambitions and a footprint across solutions. More here.

Amazon

….did a smart thing having learned a lot out of their growth review. They figured out how to get political muscle, proximity to key government entities, brains and advertising expertise. They are less worried about logistics coming from those quarters, and more about intelligence and clout. Correctly, they have recognized that government rules, regulations, and sentiment would be key to their future prosperity. Also it puts them in touch with military elements and the agencies. Amazon needs to digest some of their growth and then they will be back to rolling in new disruptions. With the HQ2 in New York and DC, it looks like Amazon wants to be where decisions are made and political power is wielded, along with finance and advertising.

There may be a lull now, but Amazon has too many fertile segments to move in; they won’t be denied. So far they win the fights they choose, though the fights are getting bigger. The best way to sell against Amazon these days is to highlight that Amazon will be their customers’ most dangerous competitor; that is how Microsoft sells against them.

Softbank

Check out this video, and remember they own Sprint. They should be a partner in the future for transit, if only we were forward and strategic in approach.

Tesla

We have talked about them so much in last two months, you can probably use a breather. Suffice it to say they are roaring in execution and nobody can run with them yet. Nobody. More here.

Google

Fully autonomous trials are underway, in action. They will either be best friends or worst competitors for Uber and the players in that segment. In the virtual taxi business they can undercut everyone, if they choose to take share. Stay tuned; there will be some shotgun weddings in the tech and so-called ride share market, as full solutions with muscle form into competitive camps. Expect advertising to get more important. Google appears to be the clear leader in autonomous, now can they monetize that in the market? More here.

Uber

… is working on seamless multi-mode solutions, expecting to capitalize in a big way, now having to maneuver for whatever comes next from an unstable relationship with Google. Expect the dominoes to fall: Uber, Lime, Lyft, Bird, Apple, Google, Tesla, Microsoft, Amazon. Something very interesting is going to happen, and it will cause a chain reaction throughout the industry as competitive responses are crafted via alignments. Everybody’s plans will be impacted by every other entities plans, plus the trade relationship with China, which is increasingly about the rules of the future road in terms of tech arrangements.

All of Automotive getting into electric bikes

Ford, GM, Audi, Pininfarina, Harley Davidson, Aston Martin, Mercedes, the list just goes on and on. In some cases they are halo efforts to throw a little green PR on themselves; in other cases they are genuine intent to build out a multi-mode story. Tesla will be now making a bike. Consider electric bikes a fantastic format now ready to massively disrupt. Literally hundreds of great products are coming to market; there is still little reason to think that the automakers will do much better in the bike space than they did against Tesla. Half efforts that are not really a big priority never hits critical mass against full efforts by the truly dedicated. The lack of preparation on infrastructure for electric bike charging is another case of the planners’ not getting the near term disruption. Where are the parking corrals? Prediction: next year will be a huge year for electric bike advancement, in both private use and public use.

The Paris model for electric bikes

Paris has folded together a program to offer very high-end electric bikes for approx. $40 a month. This gives complete on-demand freedom of transit to so many. For the cost equivalent of four rideshare fees, they can have easy transit for proximate use in their communities, and it is fun and healthful. The program is set to allow government or business sponsorship such as reduction in cost down to $20 if that is an offered benefit. It is an easy, manageable program that does so much. More here.