By Bradley Berman — Lead Editor

The captivating promise and reality of self-driving cars and drones would not be possible without the advent of powerful electric power-trains, high-energy batteries, and breakthrough sensor technologies. But the most important and valuable gains for this new era of transportation will come not from the technology to be found on-board the vehicles, but from how those autonomous machines will inter-operate within a network powered by big data, artificial intelligence, and smart algorithms.