Software in the archive

The archive holds 21 reports filed under Software, spanning 2014–2017. The earliest is “The Google Car, a look at some of the technologies that make it go”; the most recent is “News Roundup: Baidu Surprises By Offering Up Its Driverless Technology to the World For Free, Autonomous Trains to Debut in Delhi This June, and More”. Original reporting came via Jennifer van der Kleut, Burney Simpson, John Estrada and others.

This period matters for a specific reason: it is when the industry's assumptions were set. Testing permits were first issued, the acquisitions that consolidated the perception layer closed, the regulatory frameworks still in force were drafted, and a great many confident deployment dates were published. Almost all of those dates passed without incident, which makes the contemporaneous record more useful now than it was at the time — it can be read against what actually happened.

Coverage under Software overlaps most often with Technology, Driverless, Autonomous and Automated Vehicle, which is a reasonable map of where the topic sat in the industry's attention.

For what the listed companies in this field did over the same period, the D20 index roster tracks the corporate side. For what has since been deployed on public roads, the deployment tracker records operators, cities and dates, and the research library holds the papers this reporting drew on.