The Here deal represents Audi, BMW and Daimler’s fightback against a tech sector encroaching on carmaker territory. Three German carmakers have put their rivalries aside by teaming up to acquire a €2.8bn (£2bn) mapping business from Nokia, in a bid to outsmart tech groups in the race to cash in on the driverless car revolution.

However, the German trio are taking on businesses who possess considerable cash resources and who are not encumbered by the need to develop conventional vehicles at the same time.

Google

Google has long been a pioneer in the race towards driverless motoring, recently setting up its own car company, Google Auto LLC. The company is headed by Chris Urmson, project lead for Google’s self-driving cars. The company is registered with national and international organisations as a passenger vehicle manufacturer, and was licensed last year as a carmaker in California.

Documents obtained by the Guardian under a Public Records Act request in California show that Google Auto was formed as a limited liability company in late 2011. Initially, Google used it to modify and test the fleet of driverless Lexus SUVs that succeeded the company’s first self-driving Prius saloons. Google Auto is named as the manufacturer of all 23 autonomous Lexus cars registered with California’s department of motor vehicles, including all the vehicles involved in a recent spate of minor accidents in and around Google’s home town of Mountain View.

Apple

The consumer electronics giant is apparently working on an electric car or vehicle-related project that could be released by 2020. The Cupertino, California-based company behind the iPhone and Mac computer, was reported earlier this year to have been on a recruitment spree, attracting key members of car manufacturers’ electric and new vehicle system teams.

There have also been reports of a visit by senior Apple executives to a BMW plant in Leipzig, Germany, fuelling rumours that the two groups might be about to announce a formal link-up to possibly develop futuristic cars.

A report from Bloomberg indicates that Apple is targeting an electric car for release as early as 2020. Vehicles typically take seven years to develop.



Tesla

Perhaps the closest to being ready for going driverless is Tesla Motors, whose chief executive, tech pioneer Elon Musk, unveiled a software update last week that would allow its cars to autosteer and park.

Musk said, in a series of tweets, that his company was “almost ready to release highway autosteer and parallel autopark software update”, a sign that the technology was nearing a state of readiness.

He conceded, however, that the software still had work to do before it could decipher road markings at dusk.

Tesla has for months been testing its driverless software prototypes on highways north of San Francisco.