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Verizon Invests In Start-up Company Focused on Self-Driving Cars

Verizon’s venture department has invested in a company named Renovo, which is a start-up that focuses on self-driving cars.
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Photo: Mike Mozart of TheToyChannel and JeepersMedia - published on Flickr
Instead of developing a driverless vehicle or a system to enable a vehicle to drive itself, like other companies plan, the new start-up has the goal of creating a platform that will be able to manage a fleet of autonomous vehicles.

The idea makes sense in a world where businesses would get to have fleets of driverless cars, which would have to be monitored somehow.

The investment is not massive when figures are concerned, as the sum is part of a larger funding round estimated at $10 million. Presuming that Verizon is not the only investor, we are not writing about a massive sum.

Sure, $10 million is not something you can neglect, but it is “small” when we are referring to the venture wing of a telecom giant, but it proves the intent of grabbing a share of the self-driving car market.

As Engadget notes, the intention is more important than the initial investment, because there’s room for more in the future. If Verizon gets to be a part of the driverless car ecosystem before it becomes mass-market, the telecom giant could get even more money from the customer based that Renovo hopes to create.

Verizon
has the opportunity of being one of the companies that will provide an Internet connection for all of those connected cars, and it could make money from subscriptions.

Furthermore, there’s also the possibility of selling data plans to the passengers of those vehicles, which will want to stream movies, audio, and video, because they will not have to pay attention to the road.

While data plans for smartphones are getting affordable, a new line of clients, in the form of vehicles that drive themselves, could prove to be lucrative, and so will the Wi-Fi devices that will need a SIM card to have an Internet connection. With at least one connection per car, big possibilities lie ahead of Verizon.
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About the author: Sebastian Toma
Sebastian Toma profile photo

Sebastian's love for cars began at a young age. Little did he know that a career would emerge from this passion (and that it would not, sadly, involve being a professional racecar driver). In over fourteen years, he got behind the wheel of several hundred vehicles and in the offices of the most important car publications in his homeland.
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