MADISON, Wis. — Ever heard of Renovo?
If you’re in the know, of course you have. Renovo is a Campbell, Calif.-based startup, still in a stealth mode, devising a common platform on which numerous service apps can be developed for fleets of highly automated vehicles.
The startup’s formidable goal is to design an operating system — or more accurately, abstraction layers between automated vehicles and the cloud — that developers can tap to write a variety of “automated mobility on demand” apps for automated vehicles, presumably across the board.
Chris Heiser
In a recent phone interview with EE Times, Chris Heiser, Renovo CEO and co-founder, told us, “Think about how Android (based on Linux kernel) allowed app developers to leverage the platform and to bring disruptions to the smartphone market.” Renovo wants to do the same for the auto market.
From walled garden to open ecosystem
Heiser noted, “Many automakers like Ford or GM are putting a robot in a car that will be owned by humans.” In his opinion, that [building a Level 4 car] is an easier problem to solve.
In contrast, Renovo isn’t developing an OS for a robot inside the car, but instead, “We are developing a platform from which a variety of services can be launched.”
As with many automotive startups in Silicon Valley, Renovo has not detailed its technology. Nor has it publicly demonstrated it. Yet, there is a mounting evidence that the company is getting traction from a few big guns.
Two strategic investors Renovo has picked up thus far are Samsung, whose big automotive ambitions led to its acquisition of Harman, and Verizon, a cellular network giant with one of the largest telematics and fleet management practices in the world.
Separately, when Delphi and BlackBerry announced last month their partnership on a software operating system for self-driving cars, the companies said that Delphi’s turnkey self-driving system — called CSLP — is using BlackBerry QNX as an operating system. Delphi said, at that time, that other partners on the CSLP platform include Intel’s Mobileye and Silicon Valley startup Renovo.
Delphi has not elaborated on its relationship with Renovo. However, as Delphi positions itself as a leading Tier One offering a turnkey self-driving vehicle platform to automakers yet to develop their own self-driving systems, it’s not hard to imagine an opportunity for Renovo to piggyback Delphi and help those carmakers with self-driving service architecture.
Phil Magney, founder and principal advisor for Vision Systems Intelligence (VSI), believes that Renovo has “a pretty compelling solution that helps bridge some of the gaps in the cloud eco-system.” He added, “The biggest and most ambitious of them is the openness that will take mobility services from a walled garden to an open eco-system.”
Fleets of highly automated vehicles as a service
First, let’s clarify Renovo’s thinking, as it develops its technology and business model.
Renovo is a firm believer in “automated vehicles as a service.” Heiser predicts “a massive shift” in the way people use cars in cities, as cost per miles driven by fleets of automated vehicles inevitably go down.
Similarly, automakers’ revenue will be much less driven by unit sales. Miles driven per vehicle will be increasingly important. In this circumstance, cities and the automotive industry will initially need a whole bunch of robocars. But missing from this formula, in Renovo’s view, is a service infrastructure, or ecosystem, in which robocars are the integral element.
Software stacks are necessary for highly automated vehicles to do things like steering, navigation, deciding on where to go, EV charging, pulling over, identifying construction sites on roads, and a lot more.
Services that will require such software stacks include fleet management, security, “tele-operation,” data collection and other smart city-related applications.
‘Netflix’ of vehicle automation
Asked the pressing issues Renovo is trying to solve, Magney said, “Primarily, Renovo provides linkage between fleets of highly automated vehicles and the cloud in terms of how the data from the both sides are being used and monetized.”
Obviously, a data giant like Google already has the upper hand on the service platform model Renovo is pursuing. Google owns the cloud, and its Waymo leads in the development of highly-automated vehicles.
But that doesn’t mean it’s game-over for the rest of the automotive industry, in Heiser’s view, because Waymo thus far is building an ecosystem of its own.
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