2.2 Competitive rivalry Today, as autonomous vehicles received great attention from the whole society, an increasing number of companies such as Google, Tesla, GM and so on decide to enter in the autonomous vehicle industry. Google is one of the most important company and it is now leading the whole industry. Google has make effort in the industry for over ten years and promoted the autonomous named Waymo in 2016 (Davies 2016). It has broken autonomous vehicles technical fortress. It has conduct testing in California for more than nine miles and has achieved a great success (Dykewicz 2018). Although many traditional vehicle companies have entered in the industry, most of other firms except from Google is doing a research in the industry which means that they have not produced autonomous cars and conducting test on the road. Many companies in the industry do not have a mature technology. That is, the competition in the industry is not fierce. ![]() 图为五力模型 2.3 Risk of entry by potential competitors Since various governments put emphasis on autonomous, many companies from all over the world are willing to enter in the field. However, many factors impede potential competitors enter in this field. The first one is the strict technical requirements. The research and development and manufacturing of autonomous vehicles need high technical content. Consumers who purchase autonomous vehicles care more about configuration and safety. Therefore, potential competitors cannot manufacture autonomous cars with poor technology. The second element is cost of investment. When a company which enters the autonomous industry must invest huge amount of fund which is used for factory construction, technology research and development, service recruitment and training, advertising and so on. Only under the help of enough fund, can autonomous be produced successfully. In fact, most of new entrants do not have enough financial resources. This may be another barriers for potential competitors to enter the industry. 2.4 Power of suppliers Having recognized the fierce competition in the vehicle industry, many autonomous vehicle companies have strengthened its cooperation with suppliers in recent years to own a strong position in the market. The tight relationship with suppliers helps autonomous vehicle companies to achieve high production efficiency and generate a large procurement network. Suppliers have weak power of bargaining because autonomous vehicle companies have many suppliers from all over the world and they sell autonomous cars to the world and always have huge numbers of orders which will bring lots of profits to suppliers. As a result, fierce competition may exist among suppliers and autonomous vehicle companies can negotiate with suppliers with appropriate prices. Therefore, the bargaining power of suppliers may be weak.(责任编辑:周海霞) |