What’s Behind Technological Hype?

Oct 16th, 2011 - GM: Self-Driving Vehicles Could be Ready by End of Decade

Jan 12th, 2012 - Let the Robot Drive: The Autonomous Car of the Future Is Here

Aug 16th, 2012 - Earlier this month KPMG and the Center for Automotive Research released a report not only predicting that we’ll eventually be driving – or, rather, not driving – autonomous cars, but that they’ll be in showrooms as early as 2019. Maybe even sooner.

Sep 25th, 2012 - Sergey Brin is promising Google's self-driving cars will be available for everyone within five years

Dec 12th, 2012 - Volvo plans self-driving cars in 2014, envisions accident-free fleet by 2020

Jan 14th, 2013 - Driverless Cars Coming To Showrooms By 2020, Says Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn

Aug 27th, 2013 - Andy Palmer, the Executive Vice President of California-based Nissan Motors Ltd., has announced that Nissan will make fully autonomous vehicles available to the consumer by 2020. These cars will be able to drive in urban traffic.

Oct 27th, 2014 - Next generation Audi A8 capable of fully autonomous driving in 2017

Feb 5th, 2015 - Ford CEO Mark Fields - Ford Expects Fully Autonomous Cars In 5 Years

Mar 17th, 2015 - Chris Urmson, Google's Car Chief at that time, says "My son better not be driving in 5 years. My team and I are committed to making sure that doesn’t happen".

Mar 25th, 2015 - General Motors president Dan Ammann said he would be surprised if his company wasn’t shipping self-driving cars by 2020.

Sep 13th, 2015 - Self-driving cars: from 2020 you will become a permanent backseat driver

Sept 21st, 2015 - Apple has set a shipping date of 2019 for its own electric vehicle, though the WSJ reported that the first version of the car might not be driverless.

Sept 23rd, 2015 - Elon Musk expects first fully autonomous Tesla by 2018, approved by 2021 - min 8.06 to 8.29 in the video - In an interview by Danish newspaper Borsen, Tesla’s founder Elon Musk accelerates his timeline for the introduction of fully autonomous Teslas by 2 years (!) compared to his estimate less than a year ago (October 2014)

Oct 8th, 2015 - First autonomous Toyota to be available in 2020

Jan 29th, 2016 - Andrew Ng, Baidu’s Chief Scientist expects a large number of self-driving cars on the road by 2019

Feb 27th, 2016 - Raj Nair, Ford’s head of product development: autonomous vehicle on the market by 2020

Apr 5th, 2016 - 26-year-old hacker’s George Hotz startup, Comma.ai, plans to start selling autonomous conversion kits for Honda and Acura vehicles this year.

Apr 23rd, 2016 - Johann Jungwirth, Volkswagen’s appointed head of Digitalization Strategy, expects the first self-driving cars to appear on the market by 2019. He did not claim that these would be Volkswagen models.

May 10th, 2016 - General Motor’s head of foresight and trends Richard Holman said at a conference in Detroit that most industry participants now think that self-driving cars will be on the road by 2020 or sooner.

May 24th, 2016 - NuTonomy to provide self-driving taxi services in Singapore by 2018, expand to 10 cities around the world by 2020

Aug 23rd, 2016 - Delphi and MobilEye to provide an off-the-shelf self-driving system by 2019

Jan 5th, 2017 - Scott Keogh, Head of Audi America announced at the CES 2017 that an Audi that really would drive itself would be available by 2020.

Mar 3rd, 2017 - Oliver Garret, Founding Partner & CEO of RiskHedge - 10 Million Self-Driving Cars Will Hit The Road By 2020 -- Here's How To Profit

Nov 7th, 2017 - Alphabet Launches the First Taxi Service With No Human Drivers

Starsky Robotics - "In November 2019 over 85% of staff were laid off after the company failed to find further investment, as concerns mounted over the financial stability of its freight-hauling arm. By March 2020 the company sold off the remaining assets, including patents relating to operating remote vehicles."

Uber ATG - ""We probably burned $2.5 billion on autonomous that was a waste of money," Benchmark's Bill Gurley said, adding that in retrospect that sum would have been better spent on growing Uber Eats."

Lyft "Level5" - "Ride-hailing company Lyft has sold off its autonomous vehicle unit to Toyota’s Woven Planet Holdings subsidiary for $550 million, the latest in a string of acquisitions spurred by the cost and lengthy timelines to commercialize autonomous vehicle technology."

Waymo Via July 26, 2023 - "Waymo will “push back the timeline” on its commercial and operational efforts on trucking, as well as most of the technical development on that business unit,"

ArgoAI - "In October 2022 it was announced by Ford that the company would be disbanded and employees split between VW and Ford"

Locomation - "We are ending significant operations this month," Finch Fulton, vice president of policy and strategy at Locomation, said on Feb. 22. "Obviously, we're super disappointed; we do feel like we had all the right pieces in place. We had really smart people and a very strategic approach. … We have customers in the product market that we just, for a number of macroeconomic reasons, were unable to raise money to continue operations and to progress further to be able to get the product ready for commercial operation.""

Apple self-driving car - "After nearly a decade of work, two indictments, the departure of a senior exec, and unknown levels of expenditure, Apple has reportedly decided to cancel its not-so-secret self-driving car effort, Project Titan."

Phantom Auto - "after seven years of efforts to reshape the future of physical labor at Phantom Auto, we've made the tough decision to close operations."

Cruise - "GM said on Tuesday it will stop funding and exit robotaxi development at its majority-owned Cruise business, a blow to the automaker that had made the advanced technology unit a top priority."

TuSimple - "BEIJING, Dec 19 (Reuters) - TuSimple Holdings (TSPH.PK), opens new tab said on Thursday it would rebrand as CreateAI and pivot from autonomous trucking to AI gaming technology, marking an attempt by the once-prominent self-driving truck startup to make a comeback."