Waymo to Tesla: Silicon Valley is winning the race for first driverless car

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Henry Ford didn’t invent the motor car. The late 1800s saw a flurry of innovation by hundreds of companies battling to deliver on the promise of fast, efficient and reasonably-priced mechanical transportation. Ford later came to dominate the industry thanks to the development of the moving assembly line.

Today the sector is poised for another breakthrough with the advent of cars that drive themselves. But unlike the original wave of automobile innovation, the race for supremacy in autonomous vehicles is concentrated among a few corporate giants. So who is set to dominate this time?

I’ve analysed six companies we think are leading the race to build the first truly driverless car. Three of these – General Motors, Ford and Volkswagen – come from the existing car industry and need to integrate self-driving technology into their existing fleet of mass-produced vehicles. The other three – Tesla, Uber and Waymo (owned by the same company as Google) – are newcomers from the digital technology world of Silicon Valley and have to build a mass manufacturing capability.