TechCrunch in the archive

The archive holds 9 reports filed under TechCrunch, spanning 2016–2017. The earliest is “Former Employees From Google, Apple, Tesla Start 'Otto,' Develop Equipment for Self-Driving Trucks”; the most recent is “Denso, Renesas Help Rocket D20 Stock Index to New Height”. Original reporting came via Jennifer van der Kleut.

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 TechCrunch overlaps most often with self-driving cars, D20 Stock Index, driverless car and autonomous cars, 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.