• Waymo, a subsidiary of Alphabet, is leading the way in self-driving technology with its Waymo One internet taxi service and continuous advancements in driverless deployment permits.
  • Mobileye stands out with its innovative use of cameras as a basis for life-saving driver assistance technology, partnering with over 50 automotive OEMs to integrate self-driving capabilities seamlessly into urban traffic.
  • Cruise, acquired by General Motors, offers driverless taxi services in a major US city, accumulating substantial investments and milestones in autonomous driving.

Autonomous vehicles have the advantage of high safety and driving comfort, changing the way people travel and experience to a great extent. In recent years, automotive enterprises from startups to giants like Ford, Toyota, and General Motors have begun exploring self-driving cars. This blog will introduce 10 prominent autonomous vehicle manufacturers.

1. Waymo

Founded in 2009, Alphabet’s self-driving specialist Waymo began as Google’s internal self-driving car project to bridge the gap between self-driving cars and robot taxis.

As of March 2023, testing one of its self-driving electric cars on the streets of Austin, Texas, to show off the Firefly, the first prototype of its Waymo Driver.

The Waymo One internet taxi service is already open to the public in Phoenix, Arizona and San Francisco, California. In August, the company announced that it had received a driverless deployment permit from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), the final step in a rigorous process of working with regulators before offering a paid, fully self-driving ride-hailing service in San Francisco. Following this, Waymo said it would begin charging fares for passenger travel in the city and gradually welcome some of the 100,000 riders on its waitlist to the service.

2. Mobileye

Twenty years ago, Mobileye reformed driver assistance systems with a simple, radical idea: that a single, inexpensive sensor, a camera, could be the basis for life-saving technology. Today, the company is a pioneer of one of the most revolutionary driving technologies available today. Mobileye has helped develop driver assistance solutions for more than 125 million vehicles in an effort to transform the industry into a fully autonomous system. The company is now a leader in the field of driver assistance.

In March 2023, Mobileye was recognised as a leader in self-driving car technology in two industry reports – the Guidehouse Insights ranking: Autonomous Driving Systems and the first ABI Research self-driving car platform.

The company has partnered with more than 50 automotive OEMs to create a self-driving car that can be seamlessly integrated into traffic in cities around the world, including Munich, Paris, Detroit, Jerusalem, New York and Tokyo.

Also read: 6 important ethical issues in autonomous vehicles

3. Cruise

Founded in 2013 and acquired by US automotive giant General Motors in 2016, Cruise became the first company to complete completely driverless driving in a major US city when it began offering taxi services via fully autonomous means in 2021. As of February 2023, its self-driving cars had travelled a total of one million driverless miles – the equivalent of circling the globe more than 40 times – almost all in San Francisco.

Cruise has secured $10 billion in investments from respected companies and investors such as General Motors, Honda, Microsoft, T. Rowe Price and Walmart.

4. Motional

Founded in 2020 as a joint venture between Hyundai Motor Group and Ampofo, Motional is currently developing Level 4 self-driving vehicles for online taxi and on-demand delivery.

For more than five years, Motional has operated a public robo-taxi service on the Lyft network in Las Vegas, making more than 125,000 self-driving trips in the process. In December 2022, Motional began offering self-driving services for Uber passengers in Las Vegas. Beginning in 2023, Motional’s online taxi service with Lyft and Uber in Las Vegas will be fully driverless and will begin expanding to other major cities in the U.S. The service will be available in the U.S. and will be available in the U.S. and other major cities in the world.

5. Tesla

As a pioneer in the electric vehicle space, Tesla‘s solution has been on the market for years and continues to evolve as the team works to build Autopilot capabilities into its cars.

The company has developed an Autopilot software platform that is a deep learning-driven enhancement of Tesla’s benchmark Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS). This Level 2 automation system, known as Autopilot, utilises a variety of features including cruise control, self-parking, lane centring and motorway navigation.

Also read: Challenges for autonomous vehicles

6. Baidu

As the world’s largest self-driving taxi service provider, Baidu has accumulated more than 40 million kilometres of Level 4 self-driving test miles and holds 3,477 self-driving patents, holding the world record for the number of self-driving patents for four consecutive years.

In December 2022, it received the first licence to test self-driving cars without safety operators in Beijing, paving the way for the launch of a paid, fully driverless robotic taxi service in China’s capital, Beijing, following the success of the Apollo Go service in Wuhan and Chongqing.

7. Zoox

Zoox was founded in 2014 to make personal transport safer, cleaner and more enjoyable. Zoox, which has been an independently operated subsidiary of Amazon since 2020, is applying the latest technologies in automotive, robotics, and renewable energy to build an autonomous, symmetrical, bi-directional, battery-electric vehicle that addresses the unique challenges of self-driving.

In 2023, for the first time, its self-driving taxis will navigate fully autonomous on open public roads: marking the first time in history that a dedicated robotic taxi will drive autonomously with passengers on open public roads without any manual controls.

8. NVIDIA

Leveraging its decades of experience in high-performance computing, imaging and artificial intelligence, NVIDIA has built an end-to-end software-defined platform for the transport industry that enables continuous improvement and deployment through over-the-air updates, providing everything needed to develop self-driving cars at scale.

The company has partnerships with automakers such as BYD, Hyundai Motor Group, Jaguar Land Rover, Mercedes-Benz, Azera Motors and Volvo Cars to provide a range of hardware and software solutions to power the future of self-driving cars.

9. Pony. Ai

Founded in late 2016, Pony.ai is a Chinese developer of self-driving car solutions designed to bring safe, sustainable and convenient mobility to the world.

Headquartered in Beijing and Guangzhou, China, and Silicon Valley, USA, Pony.ai is a pioneer in expanding self-driving technology and services in rapidly expanding sites around the world.

In August 2023, the company announced that it would form a joint venture with Toyota to advance the mass production and mass deployment of future fully driverless robot taxis.

10. May Mobility

Self-driving vehicle startup May Mobility was founded in 2017 to build the world’s best self-driving system.

To date, the company has delivered more than 335,000 self-driving rides across multiple public transport applications in the US and Japan.

May Mobility has established key strategic partnerships with some of the world’s most innovative automotive and transport companies, such as Toyota Motor Corporation, to achieve the highest standards in rider safety, sustainability and transport fairness.