DAV Network - Decentralized Autonomous Vehicle Platform (SWOT Analysis)
FIVE SECOND OVERVIEW
DAV is an open sourced decentralized network for autonomous vehicles. The DAV Network will enable users to hire autonomous vehicles including drones, cars, and boats to complete various types of consumer or business tasks.
The network will provide the framework for the communication between user and vehicle, vehicle to vehicle, and vehicle to service provider (e.g. charging station). Vehicles will be able to discover each other and autonomously pay for services when rendered.
For a longer overview of DAV see my article here.
Let’s look at the Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) of DAV.
In order for DAV to succeed they will have to establish strong partnerships with companies that are large and powerful enough to influence others. The advisor list for DAV is impressive and contains many individuals that may provide these links in the future. Let's look at some of the advisors:
- Dr. Alan Messer - Former CT of General Motors
- Dr. Scott Horowitz - Former NASA astronaut and aerospace expert
- George D. Zamka - FAA Executive and former NASA astronaut
- Jerome Ferguson - Director of Autonomous Systems at UPS
- Biren Gandhi - Former Head of Drone Business at Cisco
- Sai Yagnyamurthy - Director of Corporate Strategy at Ford Motor Company
The DAV team has also completed important milestones for the project and plans to launch the network in May 2018, prior to the token sale. Completed milestones include the completion of the drone delivery app, completed autonomous boat selfie test, and the first automated drone delivery and negotiation.
Although the advisors are extremely strong, the team's technical background is not equally as powerful.
The team is not programming autonomous vehicles but they will be required to complete the technology stack for the DAV Network that includes decentralized identity, communication, discovery, mission flow, and payment components.
The project is also requiring a system of off-chain node and on-chain interaction. The roadmap is ambitious but looks like it may provide the team enough time to complete each step.
DAV is focusing on a niche that has the potential to grow into a trillion dollar industry by 2050. The project is looking to acquire a piece of the passenger economy (Uber, Lyft, etc), the autonomous vehicle ecosystem, and also a small but important segment of supply chain.
The most difficult and costly portion of deliveries is the "last mile" which make up approximately 55% of the total delivery cost. As companies begin to explore techniques to automate this portion of their delivery business, DAV will be ready to provide the network for their vehicles to communicate over.
The team is faced with two major threats, reliance on infrastructure and competition.
In order for DAV to succeed a large amount of infrastructure will need to be built including charging stations, parking spaces, and storage locations. The cost of this infrastructure will need to be subsidized by partners, the incentive system or the users that are looking to be rewarded for their contribution to the network.
This is where the partnerships will play an enormous role. DAV will need to work diligently to secure strong partnerships that encourage the spread of autonomous vehicle infrastructure in target cities across the globe.
Competition is a different type of threat because no competition currently exists. There a many blockchain based projects that focus on IoT or device to device communications but none are specifically focused on vehicles.
Historically specialization is a better way to address issues but the blockchain space does not always behave rationally.
Overall
DAV is an ambitious project with lofty yet realistic goals. It is addressing a need that has not yet fully developed but in doing so will provide itself lead time to develop the framework and infrastructure that the future will require.
How to Participate
If you would like to use the DAV Network as a buyer or seller then you can purchase tokens on an exchange when available or via the token sale.
📅ICO Date: June 11, 2018.
📈Token Ticker: DAV
💵Token Price: 10,000 DAV/ETH
Total Supply at TGE: 1,771,428,571 DAV
Hardcap: $38 million
Amount for Sale: 40%
Token Type: ERC20
DAV Website ||Whitepaper ||Telegram || Bounty
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_*This post contains a project overview not investment advice. As always do your own research before participating in a project of any fashion.
I like this project a lot but think it will need a lot of time to develop. I also think it's funny to add a NASA astronaut to the advisor team.
Another weakness is that the project is going to have to wait for the autonomous vehicle industry to catch up!
I agree about having a NASA astronaut, he probably has experience with autonomous driving systems and maybe with managing comm between AVs in space.
The industry is really not ready for DAV but I believe the world will change rapidly in this regard.