As we turn the page and enter a new decade, we can sense that this is the decade of fully (Level 5) autonomous vehicles.
And companies developing self-driving cars are caught in a race to see who will be first and who will make history.
They race each other and we watch history unfold before our eyes.
For now, there are three clear leaders, Google's Waymo, Tesla and Baidu's Apollo, and the rest are serious contenders.
Here is a profile of the top autonomous vehicle companies in the world.
1. Waymo
As of early January 2020, Waymo's self-driving cars have driven more than 20 million miles on public roads and tens of billions of miles through computer simulations.
With Waymo, Google has moved from building a search engine to building a "self-driving car engine."
Waymo started as Google's self-driving car project in 2009, before becoming an independent subsidiary of Alphabet (Google's parent company) in 2016.
They launched Waymo One, a fully self-driving service offering commercial robotaxis in Phoenix, Arizona.
In 2019, the Robo-taxi service in Phoenix had more than 600 passenger vehicles. If you live in Phoenix, just download the Waymo One app, request a ride, and "Waymo comes to you" to get a ride in one of Waymo's self-driving cars.
Waymo's goal (for now) as a self-driving car company is to build the world's most experienced Driver, a system called the "Waymo Driver".
On March 4, 2020, Waymo launched the fifth-generation Waymo Driver, which combines hardware, software and computing power to provide autonomous driving services and safety guarantees for passengers and items.
Waymo's robo-taxi service in Phoenix provided the training data for their development of fully self-driving cars.
Currently, Waymo is leading the development of self-driving cars, and in March 2020, Waymo announced that it had received $2.25 billion in external funding (the first in its history).
2. Tesla
In 2016, Tesla announced that "new Tesla vehicles will have the hardware conditions to meet fully autonomous driving in almost all situations in the future."
Telsa has become a well-known name in the auto industry over the years (since it was acquired by Elon Musk), especially electric vehicles.
In January 2020, Tesla became the first $100 billion U.S. automaker to go public. As a result, Tesla is worth more than Ford and General Motors combined. Today, the electric car giant is worth more than $1 trillion.
When it comes to semi-autonomous vehicle systems, Telsa is arguably the most advanced in the world.
Tesla Autopilot, its semi-autonomous driving system, enables Tesla vehicles to navigate and drive autonomously to their owners from parking spaces and garages.
Tesla's vision for fully self-driving cars is to upgrade the basic functions of Autopilot to provide full self-driving.
Tesla's Autopilot system, software and hardware have been steadily being upgraded. Slowly bring the system closer to fully autonomous driving.
Over the years, Tesla's Autopilot system has grown to include adaptive cruise control, automatic steering, lane departure warning, automatic lane changing, Smart Summon and traffic lights and stop sign recognition.
As a company, Tesla represents the future of the car, not just because of its self-driving cars, but because its cars are fully electric. Electric cars and autonomous driving are the future of cars.
3.Baidu Apollo
Baidu's Apollo is an open-source self-driving car technology platform.
In September 2019, Baidu was one of the top three autonomous vehicle companies to obtain China's first commercial license for self-driving buses. In the same month, Baidu launched a self-driving robot taxi service for the public in Hunan.
Baidu released Apollo at CES 2019.
They are building an autonomous driving technology platform, and unlike some other autonomous driving technology platforms, Apollo is open source.
"Automakers are using the Apollo self-driving technology platform to deploy Level 3 autonomous vehicles," Baidu announced when it announced the Apollo Enterprise.
Apollo Enterprise offers more than a complete autonomous driving solution. It also includes a smart map data service platform and DuerOS (Baidu voice assistant) for cars.
Apollo's partners are mainly local Chinese automakers, but there are also many well-known automakers and technology companies, such as Toyota, BMW, Volkswagen, Intel, and Nvidia.
The Apollo project was launched in 2017. At the 2022 Baidu World Conference, it was announced that it will start fully laying out self-driving vehicles in 2023.
4. General Cruise
Cruise was born out of Y-Combinator, which was acquired by General Motors in 2016. is a company focused on testing and developing autonomous vehicles.
Call them GM Cruise to let the world know they're owned by General Motors (GM). But the company has also received financing from Honda and SoftBank.
GM Cruise, like Tesla, is focused on fully autonomous electric vehicles.
They started 2020 by announcing plans to build the Autopilot Origins shuttle at GM's Detroit-Hamtramck plant.
On Cruise Origin, Cruise stated that "autonomous driving is not an upgrade to the car, but a new creation. It's not just a product you buy, it's a product you create together".
5. Pony.ai
In the first track, Pony.ai is also competing with the major self-driving companies to bring fully self-driving cars to the masses.
Pony.ai is a Chinese self-driving car company with operations in Beijing and Guangzhou in China and Silicon Valley in the United States.
In 2019, Pony.ai and Baidu became the most valuable autonomous driving companies in China.
Their self-driving route is similar to Waymo's and is committed to developing a complete self-driving service.
Pony.ai is most likely to dominate the autonomous driving market in third world countries, especially in areas with chaotic road traffic systems. The technology they're developing can handle cluttered roads, so that gives them some advantage over companies that seem to be building self-driving cars to order.
6.Argo AI
Argo AI is an autonomous driving technology platform company dedicated to delivering fully integrated autonomous driving systems ready for mass production.
They are approaching the full autonomous driving track in different ways. Argo AI hopes to build a self-driving technology platform that automakers can use to turn their vehicles into fully autonomous vehicles.
Argo AI CEO Bryan Salesky co-founded the company in 2016 with Peter Rander (a former Uber head of engineering).
Argo noted in a 2019 blog post that "self-driving technology is not a winner, it will take all the sprints to get to the finish line".
Ford has invested more than $1 billion in Argo AI. More recently, German automaker Volkswagen seemed to see the same prospect, investing $2.6 billion in Argo AI in 2019.
Time will tell if Ford and VW actually see a multibillion-dollar light in Argo AI.
As it stands, they are also one of the world's leading self-driving car companies.
7. Aurora
Aurora is a self-driving car company founded by former leaders of Google's Waymo, Uber and Tesla's self-driving projects.
Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, boldly stated: "The Aurora team is the most experienced, pioneering and advanced team in the field of self-driving cars. This team will bring self-driving cars to the mass market."
This is a company that has been quietly building self-driving technology.
As Zoe from The Verge puts it, "Aurora doesn't do dog and pony shows. It doesn't roll out vehicles just to prove they exist, and it doesn't give journalists test drives to prove that the technology actually works."
However, that appeal is starting to change in 2020. Aurora has now opened its doors to the public.
Aurora's approach to full self-driving is similar to that of Argo AI and Baidu's Apollo, which are developing a self-driving technology platform that automakers can use to make their vehicles autonomous.
Their platform combines hardware, software and data services to enable vehicles to safely and autonomously transport people or goods.
Aurora is backed by e-commerce giant Amazon, and so far, they're a major bet for Amazon's slice of the self-driving pie.
8. Yandex
Marque Brownlee (one of my favorite tech reviewers) rides a driverless taxi at CES 2019. He rode in one of Yandex's self-driving cars, completely without a driver in the driver's seat.
Yandex Self-Driving Car is the robotaxi project of the Russian multinational Yandex. Their self-driving technology is one of the best in the world today.
They are currently working with Hyundai Mobis to develop control systems for Level 4 and Level 5 autonomous vehicles.
Yandex self-driving cars are working on fully autonomous driving like Google's Waymo is doing. Their goal is to develop self-driving cars that can provide taxi services of the future.
The Yandex company has been testing their cars on public roads in various countries such as Russia, Israel, and the United States.
They may not be at the front in the autonomous car race, but they're definitely not too far behind.
Google's Waymo reached 20 million miles driven in January 2020, while Yandex self-driving cars reached 1 million miles on public roads.
9. Aptiv
Aptiv is a self-driving technology company working to develop commercial autonomous ride-hailing services at scale.
It currently operates an autonomous ride-hailing service in Las Vegas. If you live near Las Vegas and want to experience self-driving for yourself, you can use the Lyft app to hail it.
So far, Aptiv has provided self-driving services to more than 100,000 public riders in a defined area of Las Vegas.
Apparently, the plan is to develop a more robust system and move their autonomous ride-hailing service across the ocean.
In 2019, Aptiv opened an autonomous driving center in Shanghai in hopes of gaining a stronger foothold.
10. Tucson Future
TuSimple, a self-driving truck company, is developing technology to get from one warehouse to another without human intervention.
The company's trucks are able to drive autonomously from one warehouse to another. It develops commercial-grade Level 4 (SAE) fully autonomous driving solutions for the logistics industry.
The company's mission is to improve safety, reduce shipping costs and reduce carbon emissions.
In 2015, Mo Chen established the company headquarters in San Diego, California.
Summarize
The future with self-driving cars is overwhelming.
Who will be first is all we care about. But for most of these companies, it's really less about being first and more about getting to the finish line.
Who will dominate the new industry born from the development and implementation of fully autonomous vehicles?
let us wait and see.