Speaking as someone outside the autonomous vehicle industry, can you provide sources or reputable commentary on how Waymo is furthest ahead? And maybe a rough ranking of the rest of the major players?
The only public data is California's safety reports over the last couple years, which show Cruise and Waymo having millions of miles driven with Waymo having fewer "disengagements" than Cruise. There is also the fact that Waymo has ride sharing service in "production". As someone who is also outside the AV industry that is the closest I've gotten to a source, everything else is just hearsay by various Hacker News engineers about how Waymo is the best.
The ranking as I understand it is Waymo, Cruise, then everyone else.
You might want to have a look into the public output of George Hotz. Obviously he is a little biased towards his own efforts, but he is very open about limitations and the actual reality of the self driving business.
