U.S. Congress in the archive

The archive holds 2 reports filed under U.S. Congress, spanning 2016–2017. The earliest is “Google is Looking to Hire a Few Good Autonomous Test Drivers”; the most recent is “News Roundup: Congress Set to Weigh 14 Driverless Vehicle Bills, Univ. of Michigan to Get Two Self-Driving Shuttles, and More”. 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 U.S. Congress overlaps most often with autonomous vehicles, driverless shuttle, driverless vehicles and House of Representatives, 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.