Daimler in the archive

The archive holds 31 reports filed under Daimler, spanning 2013–2016. The earliest is “Disruptive technologies: Advances that will transform life, business, and the global economy”; the most recent is “News Roundup: Russia Developing Autonomous Mini-Bus, Velodyne's Lidar System Takes Off, and Google Car Team Gets a New Director”. Original reporting came via Jennifer van der Kleut, Burney Simpson, Smithsonian.com 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 Daimler overlaps most often with Driverless, Autonomous, Consumer and Connected 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.