Alexis Christopheror and Dan Hawley of Yahoo Finance discuss Microsoft’s latest deal to enter the self-driving car space.
Video transcript
Alexis Christoforce: I want to shift gears here now and check out Dan Howley, our technology editor, for the story that broke out this morning. Dan, more on the EV, Everywhere, Turning on the Electric Vehicle of General Motors. Cruz is now getting some big support from some big-name companies, including Microsoft. Fill out.
Dan Holly: Yes, Microsoft is kind of on a cruise. This is a kind of autonomous GM segment. You can see it here. This is one of the vehicles that they’re kind of pushing forward. They also have another vehicle that is supposed to be a type of person, rather than a personal vehicle. But Microsoft has invested $ 2 billion in Cruise, along with GM and Honda, to make them the cloud provider for the service.
And that’s really important because what everyone’s talking about is how the cars and autonomous vehicles along these lines will need Cloud Infrastructure and a large chunk of it to function properly. They will have to talk to each other, the vehicles themselves, and also the infrastructure at some point. So, the idea here is that if they see or have to see an entire network of self-driving cars across the country and the world, they will need to be able to communicate, and using the cloud is a way to do that.
Now, Microsoft is clearly one of the largest cloud providers on Earth with Azure. They are behind Amazon and AWS, and no one else is in front of them. So it’s very interesting to see Microsoft jump into this space. Obviously, it will continue to heat up in this area, but having this type of investment really is a big deal for Microsoft in its own right. Because it shows they’re trying to go into space along those lines and say, look, we’re not just focusing on sitting on the sidelines. We want to invest in this as well.
Alexis Christoforce: We are also seeing significant movement in electric vehicle stocks. I know I have mentioned EV. This relates to self-driving cars, which are the Cruise component within GM. But what about the space for electric cars under the Biden administration? We see stocks taking off, Tesla, once again, continuing to tear it apart. What do you hear from the analysts as you talk to them about their projections for EV space in the coming months?
Dan Holly: Yes, a lot of talk has been made about how well the EV space will perform under Biden, especially because of what kind of federal funds could go into them or what kind of incentives could go to them, especially since there is this push to stay away from vehicles that Powered by internal combustion engines.
So, whether these are personal cars or even trucks or buses, or anything along those lines, that will kind of be the trend that governments all over the world, including in Europe, will see that they will completely do away with internal combustion engines. In the next two decades. So – or at least the next two years.
So, this is something I think we’ll hear a lot about from the Biden administration. But do not forget that there will be a lot of pressure. Obviously, we have a lot of oil interests in the country, and they will definitely want to be heard regarding what is happening to the future of internal combustion engines and the type of emissions produced.
Alexis Christoforce: Yes, today we found out that the federal appeals court struck down or canceled Trump’s rules on emissions in power plants. We see some related stocks up. Also, the Rivian looks the same – it does very well here and can also garner a lot of interest from investors, raising $ 2.65 billion before the car debuted. What do you think that?
Dan Holly: Yes, you know, the Rivian was interesting because they were in talks with Ford to help develop a platform there. It’s really this weird way that the big-name automakers are working with these outside companies to try to let them build the vehicles that they’re going to offer and then apply this kind of technology in their own cars.
So, we’ve seen this somewhat with General Motors and Nicolas, where it has clearly sort of exploded, not necessarily the right way for GM or Nikola. The idea was at GM to provide Nikola with more manufacturing capabilities, in addition to some of the hydrogen technologies they use, hydrogen fuel cell technologies, which is what Nikola was supposed to do alone. Obviously, however, this kind of fell back on them a little. But this Rivian investment will clearly be more impressive, at least as far as we’ve seen.
To date, Tesla is still the world leader in electric cars. And anyone trying to break into Tesla, whether it’s Ford with the Mach-E now, we know we have a GMC Bhammer all-electric. I doubt this will really kick in as much as they want. But it is a fairly re-branding of this product. They will all have to pass through Tesla. And I think that’s really something that they need to take into consideration.
There are other electric cars now available in various showrooms. People just aren’t interested in buying them. It seems as if the Tesla is the only car that people look at and say, Yeah, that’s the kind of futuristic vehicle I want. They don’t necessarily want, you know – the EV of a current type of car. So I think the Mach-E will really be a test of consumers’ appetites for electric cars and the various styles they have. This was supposed to be a Mustang. it’s not. But we’ll see if some kind of old brand reinvention like this could play well in electric cars and whether people are really interested in buying them.