Much like the infamous flying car , people have been dreaming of cars that can do the driving for them for nearly a century

While their aerial brethren are still largely mired in the conceptual stage, the technology to put self-driving cars on the road is already here. Of course, there are still questions of legislation, liability and ethics to consider, but almost every major automotive company currently has a self-driving car either being tested on the road or in the works.

Meanwhile, many companies outside the automotive industry are now either producing or partnering with more experienced to make autonomous vehicles a reality. With so many players in the game, producing so many different vehicles, we wanted to take a look at who is doing what and how far along they are.

Cars with autonomous capabilities are currently ranked on a level system established by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE). The levels range from 0 to 5, with Level 0 being no automation at all and Level 5 being completely autonomous in all conditions.

Summary table of the SAE's levels of vehicle automation. (Image courtesy of SAE International/J3016.)

The race to production-ready Level 5 vehicles is heating up, but it’s far from over.

Apple

While computer giant Apple won’t say for sure whether it’s planning to manufacture its own cars, it definitely has its fingers deep in the autonomous technology pie. Apple CEO Tim Cook recently told Bloomberg that the company is working on the kinds of “autonomous systems” used in self-driving cars, but hasn’t made up its mind exactly what the company will do from a product standpoint.





Baidu

(Image courtesy of Baidu.)

Chinese tech firm Baidu and its Baidu Intelligent Driving Group US are working to create an autonomous car. The company’s Autonomous Driving Unit started research into autonomous driving technology in 2014 and began successful road tests in a variety of complex driving scenarios just a year later. Since then, more than 50 companies including Ford, Daimler, Nvidia and Microsoft have come on board to join its open-source Apollo self-driving car platform.