State Of Autonomy: January Recap

3 min readFeb 4, 2017

Every month, I recap the news articles I’ve consumed around autonomous vehicles, calling out the highlights and keeping track of market projections. This is also your chance, dear readers, to nominate a topic for discussion in the following month.

The legislators and lobbyists are starting to rev their engines. Take it as a sign of mounting competition, both nationally and globally. Remember, kids: consumer opinion doesn’t matter when trillions of dollars are at stake.

Some housekeeping: apologies for the slow posting recently — I’m still running around in February, but March should see me back in the groove. If you know any automotive designers, I’m looking to work with one on a design concept for AVs. Thanks in advance.

This Month’s Highlights:

Market Predictions:

NVIDIA & Audi added to Self-Piloted, 2020, R&D Demo: NVIDIA made a handful of announcements over the past month, but their Audi collaboration came wrapped in a claim to hit the market with a Level 4 solution by 2020. “Level 4”, for those not in the know, is a mostly autonomous vehicle that has oh-shit controls in case the human meatsack needs to take over. It is also, in my opinion, a not-at-all realistic solution… alas, it’s an accepted industry goal for the time being, and vague enough that the players in this space can freely speculate on it without having to justify their tech. Hence, the pile of entries in the “Self-Piloted” section of my chart.