Autonomous vehicles or self-driving cars are vehicles that can drive themselves without the need for human intervention. They are also known as driverless or robot cars. Leading-edge autonomous vehicle brands are thus considered path-breakers, similar to how car brands were considered when they were invented.

Here are some of the autonomous vehicle brands that are leading the market and have an edge over their potential competitors.

Google Cars
Google has been the flag-bearer of many new technologies and autonomous vehicles are another segment that the company is stepping in. Self-driving cars have sensors that can detect objects from a distance as large as 2 football fields one after the other. The cars can identify all obstacles like pedestrians, vehicles, and even birds and fluttering plastic bags. The automobile is navigated on the road with the help of software. Although the technology is cutting-edge, there are still major improvements expected in terms of reliability, safety, and cybersecurity. Google is reported to be working on all these things and the major advancements are being made on the cars regularly. The car brand is now known as Waymo and is a part of Alphabet Inc., a subsidiary of Google.

GM Cruise
GM Cruise – the autonomous vehicle segment of General Motors has one of the biggest fleets of driverless cars. The company is currently testing as many as 180 cars and they’ve driven about 1 million miles combined. The car company enjoys a heritage of about 111 years and thus it is well able to gain the trust of the populace. Also, GM is using the features of its existing cars that are very popular among the masses, which will further give an edge to GM Cruise.

Baidu Apollo
Baidu has created a software platform named Apollo for its initiatives in the self-driving car segment, thereby making it one of the first leading autonomous vehicle brands. After almost 2 years of continuous development and testing, the program was announced in the year 2017. Currently, the Apollo platform is used by about 12000 developers and partners across the world, and this is one of the biggest autonomous driving ecosystems that currently exists.

Tesla
Tesla is a company that has always been ahead of the curve when it comes to new technology; take, for example, its electric cars. Self-driving cars have been no different, and the brand is already equipped with hardware that is necessary for driverless cars. They have an advanced driver-assistance system known as the Tesla Autopilot, which combines features like Autosteer, Traffic-Aware Cruise Control (TACC), Autopark, etc. but the involvement of a human driver is required as of now. Tesla is one of the leading, cutting-edge autonomous vehicle brands and aims to launch the first workable driverless cars in the market as soon as possible.