Years ago, advances in luxury cars largely revolved around ever-greater speed and ease of control. Then came the rise of electric vehicles (EVs), marketed as the cleaner way to get around and appealing to environmentally conscious drivers. However, in a world of increasingly short attentions spans, it wasn’t long before consumers started looking for the next big thing in automotives. In the second decade of the 21^st century, development of artificial intelligence (AI) saw great advances in many aspects such as computer vision, object recognition and game playing. These advances in AI technology led to what is probably the next thing to look out for in the automotive industry, autonomous or self-driving vehicles.

Before dive in, some clarifications are in order. While we say that self-driving cars are going to be the next big thing in the automotive industry, we aren’t discounting the significance of fast cars or the environmental potential of EVs. The need for speed forms a primal link between man and machine, and EVs are simply the next evolution in how we power our cars.

Also, the terms autonomous and self-driving have been used interchangeably to describe two main categories of vehicles, cars made for retail and those made specifically for burgeoning autonomous delivery and ride-hailing services. For this article, we shall be referring primarily to the former.