Autonomy

A deep dive into the race to develop and perfect the driverless car—an innovation that promises to be the most disruptive change to our way of life since the smartphone by a veteran insider of the automotive and tech worlds

In Autonomy, former GM executive and current advisor to the Google Self-Driving Car project Lawrence Burns offers a sweeping history of the race to make the driverless car a reality. In the past decade, titans of the old automobile industry, like General Motors, have been partnering with robust tech startups, such as Tesla and Uber, to revolutionize the way we move around the world. It’s not a question of whether the self-driving car will disrupt the automobile industry; it’s a question of when, how, and who will do it.

With the first driverless car likely to hit markets in less than ten years, Burns also looks toward the future and explains how this new technology will impact our lives—from drastically reducing our carbon footprint and eliminating 90 percent of road fatalities, to automating yet another segment of blue collar industries, putting more workers out of a job.

We are on the brink of a technological revolution that promises to fundamentally change how we interact with our world. A chronicle of the past, diagnosis of the present, and prediction of the future, Autonomy is the ultimate guide to understanding the driverless car and to navigating the revolution it sparks.