This is the not too distant future. This is a level 4 driverless car. Level 5 will be completely automated with no steering wheel.
All the big car makers are working overtime to develop electric vehicles and driverless technology. They are getting there. In the last quarter of 2018 Electric Vehicles (EVs) outsold hybrids in the US for the first time. Cheaper batteries are beginning to make economic sense for EVs. Nevertheless the EV market in the US is still only 2% and the market is dominated by Tesla.
Autonomous driving is coming along more slowly. Prototypes are being tested on roads in California and Germany but they travel slowly. A trio of experts in developing this technology broke away to found Aurora Innovation in 2016. They are not going to build cars; they will put their technology in and on other makes. At the moment they are working mainly with Hyundai, Kia and Fiat Chrysler. Aurora is small – about 250 people working in Palo Alto and Pittsburgh – but their potential is huge and will change our lives.
It will be as great a shift as the change from horses to motor cars at the end of the 19th century. Individual car ownership will dwindle and we will rent these new generation super-smart vehicles. A driving licence and car insurance will be obsolete. I have heard nothing about the military uses for driverless vehicles but they are obvious, so it will not just makes our roads safer but save lives on the battlefield.
I read about most of this in an article by Baillie Gifford, a fund manager with thirty-eight funds in their stable. My favourites are Scottish Mortgage and Monks. The former has a small investment (0.02%) in Aurora but if progress is satisfactory I expect them to increase their funding of what is for now a loss-making business.